Netherworld Investigator

Yu Jun’s cup fell out of his hand.

“Young man, are you here just to find fault with me?” he asked. “I’ve come clean and told you everything and still you accuse me of lying—so why don’t you tell me what is the truth yourself?”

“The truth?” I countered. “You know that better than us. But the truth of the matter is this: Huang Youcai and his family died in a very bizarre manner, and quickly after that the five million yuan in his account was transferred to yours!”

“Mr. Yu,” added Huang Xiaotao, “you mentioned that you were producing fake mobile phones with Huang Youcai. Is there any evidence to support that claim?”

Yu Jun snorted, “Miss Officer, no one in their right mind would leave evidence for this kind of dealing! We all did everything by verbal agreements to prevent outsiders from sniffing us out.”

“What about the goods?”

“They’re all sold out! Perhaps,” he added with a smirk, “the phone you’re using now is one of them.”

“In that case, a huge chunk of your income has an unexplainable source—that alone is enough to charge you!” threatened Huang Xiaotao.

Yu Jun sat back in his chair and calmly argued, “Go ahead and try! I’m not afraid of you. Besides, I have a way to clean them up.”

I was shocked at Yu Jun’s boldness in openly mentioning money laundering in front of a police officer. Nonetheless, we managed to prove one thing: the money he got was indeed acquired illegally!

My guess was that the business dealings between him and Huang Youcai were purely fictional. He merely killed the family with the Wealth Beckoning Cat and then transferred the property to his own name—and that was essentially no different from any other cases of premeditated murders.

The position that Yu Jun was in right now—Production Manager—might sound prestigious to some, but in truth, he was still an employee of a company working for his boss. Five million yuan was undoubtedly no meager sum to him.

Yu Jun was probably only trying his hand at using the Wealth Beckoning Cat when he killed his competitor in the first case. The second case was when he was driven fully by greed and murdered the whole family to get money. He was showing a pattern of using the Wealth Beckoning Cat more skillfully and cruelly too. If he wasn’t stopped soon, I was afraid that more and more victims would turn up.

I put my hand into my pocket and secretly pressed record on my phone. I gave Huang Xiaotao a knowing look. She leaned forward and said, “Since you’ve admitted that much, why don’t you just tell us honestly: where did the money come from?”

Yu Jun smiled. “Huang Youcai gave it to me.”

“He gave it to you after he died?” scoffed Huang Xiaotao.

“Miss Officer,” replied Yu Jun, “you are a member of the police force. You should know common sense. He wrote a five-million-yuan check to me, and I cashed it in. Therefore, five million yuan was deducted from his account.”

“And why would he give you that much money?” asked Huang Xiaotao.

“He considered me as a brother!” Yu Jun replied.

Huang Xiaotao snorted aloud. “He considered you as a brother, but you treated him like a stranger! You rented a house opposite his, but when the tragedy happened to his family, you didn’t even care and just moved out of the house immediately. In fact, I believe you even took one thing away from his house!”

Yu Jun was slightly shocked. He probably didn’t anticipate us to find out about it. But he very soon regained his composure and smiled calmly, saying, “No matter what, the truth remains that Huang Youcai gave me that money himself. Maybe he had a mental illness and after giving me his money, decided to kill his whole family. What does that have anything to do with me?”

Huang Xiaotao furiously slammed the table and sprang up to her feet and boomed, “Yu Jun! You murdered two families just for the sake of money! Because of you, the lives of two young families were cut short! Your crimes are so horrendous no punishment is heavy enough for you!”

I was taken aback by Huang Xiaotao’s sudden outburst, but her provocations finally broke Yu Jun’s calm façade. It was as if a mask had fallen from his face, and his countenance changed into an unmistakably malicious expression.

“You’re accusing me of murder?” he croaked. “Do you have any evidence for that? Whatever you want to ask or check, I’d suggest you hurry up, because I am going to emigrate soon! In a few days, the Chinese police won’t be able to reach me!”

Huang Xiaotao clenched her fists tightly. I was really worried that she would punch Yu Jun’s face, so I quickly interrupted with, “Do you really think that we don’t know about the Wealth Beckoning Cat?”

After the brief interaction, I was almost a hundred percent sure that Yu Jun was indeed the murderer behind these two cases, so I said that just to test his reactions. 

Yu Jun froze for a moment, and then slowly clapped his hands.

“Excellent!” he exclaimed. “You are much more capable than the two officers who came here yesterday. So you figured it all out. But what can you do about it? Even if you know the truth, there’s nothing you can do to me!” 

We were speechless. None of us expected him to admit it so easily!

“Now you know how I can kill thousands of people without even lifting a hand,” he said. “So don’t say that I didn’t warn you. My patience is limited. If you push me hard enough, I might just kill everyone! All right, I think I’ve wasted enough time here. I should go back to work now.”

When he was blatantly threatening us, I noticed that his legs were shaking all the time, and I couldn’t help but sneer. It turned out that this guy was just bluffing, and the Wealth Beckoning Cat was not so powerful after all.

I never believed that killing could be done so easily and without the murderer having to pay any cost. I was sure that Wealth Beckoning Cat must come with a high cost to its master and worked within considerable limitations.

Yu Jun left the room soon after that, and I said, “There’s nothing more to ask him. Let’s go!”

“Are we really leaving?” asked Dali with widened eyes. “That bastard is clearly guilty! Shouldn’t he be arrested?”

“We can’t prove that he’s broken the law yet,” I explained. “Besides, there are hundreds of his people here. If we take reckless action, we might not even make it out of here.”

The best we could do was temporarily retreat. But before we left, I quickly tore a piece of paper from the office table, then wrapped it around the plastic cup that Yu Jun threw in the trash can and put it in my pocket.

After leaving the factory, I was worried that Huang Xiaotao was still mad and wanted to comfort her with a few words. But when I saw her face, she seemed completely calm and I found no signs of anger at all. Huang Xiaotao noticed my puzzled expressions and asked, “How was my acting?”

“You’re joking! That was an act?” I was completely taken by surprise.

“You really got me back there!” cried Dali. “Xiaotao-jiejie, you’re a pro!”

Huang Xiaotao twirled her hair and said, “It wasn’t all an act. I thought of the little girl we met last night who lost her whole family and it did infuriate me, but I only provoked him to make him blurt out the truth. So, did you get it on record, Song Yang?”

I took out my phone and replied, “Yup. All recorded.”

Dali was stunned. “Wait, did you guys communicate with each other through telepathy? I’m completely in the dark here!”

Huang Xiaotao smiled, “I guess you could say that our minds are in sync.”

After we got in the car, I asked Huang Xiaotao not to hurry and just wait here for a while. I had observed Yu Jun’s hand and found a lot of band-aids on his fingers. My guess was that the Wealth Beckoning Cat probably needed to feed on its master’s blood every day, in which case we should follow him back to his house after he left work.

Huang Xiaotao agreed. She turned on the radio and played relaxing music, then leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.

Stakeouts in reality, as I found out, were very boring.

“You know,” Dali suddenly broke the silence, “I think there’s one person we should find to solve this case.”

“Who?” Huang Xiaotao and I simultaneously asked.

“Zhang Jiulin!" Wang Dali showed a mysterious expression.

“A friend of yours?”

“No,” answered Dali seriously. “He’s a character from a novel that I’m reading, called Otherworldly Merchant[1], and the protagonist of the novel is called Zhang Jiulin. This Wealth Beckoning Cat sounds right up his alley. And that got me thinking: if a mysterious object from the book does exist, then there must be a real Otherworldly Merchant out there! Maybe we should seek advice from such an expert, dude!”

“You idiot!” I teased him. “How could you believe in a garbage novel like that?”

1. A novel written by the same author as this novel, Daomen Laojiu (Ninth Daoist). Also being translated here on Wuxiaworld! https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/otherworldly-merchant