Chapter 34

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Present\n“Babe, you sure your gun is safe?” the mercenary captain asked.\n

“Do you want to check?” Zhou Luoyang offered him the gun. “I’m a hundred percent sure it’s only a prop. I think it’s a water gun.”\n

“Don’t give it to him,” Du Jing said.\n

I’m the real killjoy, Zhou Luoyang thought. But the captain indicated that it was fine.\n

“Shoot,” he said.\n

The priest looked rather unhappy. Zhou Luoyang pulled the trigger—the moment he did so, a deafening bang rang out through the room.\n

The priest and botanist screamed. The captain, who was also badly scared, gasped for breath. Zhou Luoyang himself had received the worst fright of all. “Did you have to do that?! Damn!”\n

As he’d thought, the gun had some infrared remote control function, and the moment its trigger was pulled, it activated the corresponding sound effect—the gunshot. The surround sound was so immensely realistic that Zhou Luoyang’s heart had nearly lept out of his chest.\n

“Goddamn…Fuck, that was…” the captain wheezed.\n

The priest had nearly been frightened out of his wits. When the captain stepped down, he immediately rushed to him to check if he was alright. Several of them were still panting; only the professor and Du Jing were quiet.\n

After a brief silence, the music loudly resumed.\n

“The path to the future has been opened. The treasure has appeared before your eyes, but the bloodshed has not yet ended. The sole person who obtains the treasure will attain a reward never seen before…”\n

“I’ve already died, haven’t I,” said the captain. “I probably won’t be getting a share of the souvenirs.”\n

The priest smiled at him. “I’ll give you my share.”\n

Zhou Luoyang set the gun on the altar. “Are we still playing?”\n

“There are two minutes left,” said the professor. “Why don’t we keep going until time is up? Who’s up next?”\n

He turned to look at Du Jing. “You need to avenge your comrade.”\n

“You guys go first. I’ll go last,” Du Jing said.\n

The players glanced at each other, and the priest spoke up. “Well then, there’s no one else. Everyone gets to leave with their lives intact.”\n

“There is. I need to kill the professor. After I shoot him, the four of us can leave alive,” the botanist corrected.\n

“That’s no good. By order of priority, the bodyguard should first kill the tourist in order to avenge his comrade, then I kill the bodyguard, then the botanist kills me. In the end, you brothers…you sisters—whatever your characters’ relationship is—you two will leave alive,” the professor said.\n

Zhou Luoyang couldn’t help but laugh. He was right.\n

“Then let’s go with it. Time’s almost up,” Du Jing said.\n

Zhou Luoyang stepped onto the altar and said teasingly, “Go on. See the storyline to the end.”\n

“I won’t point a gun at you,” Du Jing said.\n

“Hey, bro.” The “dead” man from several minutes ago was dissatisfied. “He just killed your comrade, you know. I’m your bro.”\n

Zhou Luoyang feared that if he didn’t get Du Jing to shoot, the captain wouldn’t be able to rest in peace, so he turned to Du Jing. “The gun isn’t real.”\n

“I won’t, even if it’s fake,” Du Jing said lightly. “I never will.”\n

“Alright!” An employee opened up the door. “Time’s up. Thank you, everyone.”\n

Everyone relaxed. Zhou Luoyang would be lying if he said he wasn’t touched by Du Jing’s declaration. But the way Du Jing said it was so steady and unconcerned, as if he were discussing the most trivial of affairs, that it hadn’t stirred up anyone’s emotions. Only the most innocent captain had immersed himself too deeply in the story and was quite discontent after being “killed off.” \n

Of course, that discontentment vanished soon enough. Once they left the room, he was back to normal, joking and chatting with the little priest. \n

It was packed with players outside. There were only five shares of the final “treasure,” which was split evenly among the surviving players. Everyone brought their exchange stub up to the front desk and exchanged their treasure for a prize, except for the captain, of course. The prize given to the five who survived was a voucher to a barbecue restaurant in the shopping center, 50 a person.\n

If four players had survived, they would receive Cambodian portable chargers as a souvenir. If three had survived, they would receive small laptop sleeves. If two had survived, they would receive dinner date vouchers. If only one person had survived, they would receive a “mystery prize.”\n

“What’s the mystery prize?” Zhou Luoyang was very curious.\n

“Maybe you’ll find out next time you give it a shot,” the boss said, smiling.\n

Well, alright. Zhou Luoyang told Du Jing, “That was pretty fun.”\n

The boss explained, “You were only allowed to make the very first gunshot. Also, you needed to rope in all the other players throughout the course of the game so that they wouldn’t kill you in the very end. The escape room actually branches off into several side stories, which you guys didn’t trigger in this round—for instance, the iron gate in the prison can lead to two different rooms. And Shiva’s statue and the stele that rotates both had mechanisms inside them.”\n

“There were branch-offs?” Zhou Luoyang asked. “I completely missed them.”\n

“And the paths in the maze—do they also lead to different endings?” the professor asked.\n

“Correct.” The boss nodded. “The priest didn’t lead you down the wrong path. He’s too kind.”\n

The priest widened his eyes in realization. “So that’s how it is.”\n

“You shouldn’t have taken out the map for everyone to see. We mentioned in the info pamphlets that you weren’t supposed to let the other players see your props. If you just told them that different players were supposed to go down different paths, if you teamed up with any player at a fork in the road, or even if you didn’t say anything at all, all of those actions would have affected the final ending.”\n

“Wow.” The escape room had seemed pretty basic to Zhou Luoyang, but it actually contained all these branch-offs.\n

The boss continued on. “The tourist wasn’t holding onto the gun, were you? You had the ability to kill players at any point in the game. The dead players would then have to follow the priest because he can guide souls. But the souls can’t use their props and are only allowed to offer suggestions from the side.”\n

Zhou Luoyang looked at Du Jing. You really spoiled all the boss’s plans. You didn’t take out the gun until the very end.\n

“Would you like to view videos of the endings? There are twelve possible endings in total. I can show you a couple of them,” the boss offered.\n

“No, it’s okay.” Du Jing candidly turned down the offer. “We’ll come back another time and fumble our way through the story on our own.”\n

The boss nodded and looked to the professor, then to Du Jing, and finally to the mercenary captain. “The barbecue upstairs is pretty good.”\n

The boss could tell that from the moment they entered the room to the moment they exited, these six people had accomplished their initial goal in playing the game—though after that gunshot, they’d practically completely forgotten about it.\n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\n“Bye-bye.”\n

“Bye—”\n

Everyone said their goodbyes outside. Du Jing said to the captain, “Add me on WeChat. I’ll treat you to a meal another day as an apology.”\n

“Apology? What for? Do you play basketball? We should get together and play when you’re free.”\n

Du Jing nodded, and they all exchanged contact information, still in the pairs formed in the escape room. The captain asked Zhou Luoyang, “What about you?”\n

Zhou Luoyang pointed politely at Du Jing. “If you need anything, just contact him.”\n

“That works. Let’s all meet up again in the future.” The captain held up a finger gun at Zhou Luoyang, one eye narrowed, then jerked his hand back, as if in rebound after opening fire. “You owe me one.”\n

The priest and the mercenary captain left together. When Zhou Luoyang turned back around, he caught sight of the professor.\n

“Want to eat together?” The professor walked over alone. Zhou Luoyang glanced behind him. The professor evidently was not interested in the young man he’d teamed up with. Once they’d left the escape room, he’d saved his contact info but didn’t do much more than that.\n

Zhou Luoyang looked at Du Jing, who nodded.\n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nThey sat down in a private room at the Korean barbecue place. The owner pulled down the vent hood, and after asking them to wait just a moment, she left to ready their food.\n

“Are you together?” the professor asked.\n

Zhou Luoyang smiled. “What do you mean by ‘together’?”\n

“Yes,” Du Jing answered without the slightest hesitation.\n

“What’s your profession?” the professor asked Zhou Luoyang.\n

“What do you do? You’re not really a professor, are you?”\n

“He works in public security.” Du Jing hung up his blazer and returned to his seat. “He’s criminal police.”\n

Zhou Luoyang eyes widened.\n

Thinking back on the professor’s reactions in the escape room, Zhou Luoyang understood at once—this guy worked in the same profession! More or less.\n

He wasn’t the slightest bit surprised at Du Jing’s exposing his identity. A private investigator and a police officer—it was evident that they’d developed a tacit, mutual understanding upon meeting. So that meant that the third person—that “mercenary captain”—was very likely the person they were both after.\n

Du Jing wasn’t bothered in the least as he sat and scrolled through his phone, replying to Zhuang Li’s texts from that afternoon.\n

“Let me introduce myself.” The “professor” extended a hand. “My name is Huang Ting. I’m an officer of the Chinese branch at Interpol.”\n

Zhou Luoyang shook his hand and introduced himself, then looked at Du Jing. He didn’t know how much of what they knew could be disclosed to Huang Ting.\n

“I’ve seen your old pictures. You weren’t this skinny then,” Du Jing remarked.\n

“I was sick,” Huang Ting explained, “but I’m better now. I know your old boss, Qin Guodong, Director Qin.”\n

Du Jing nodded. “What’d the old-timer say?”\n

“I have a good friend who used to work over at Changyi, too. His surname is also Zhou,” Huang Ting said.\n

“I know. He quit to go frolicking.”\n

Huang Ting sized him up. “You’re Du Jing. I’ve seen your pictures too.”\n

“Yes,” Du Jing answered coolly, finally looking up from his phone. He knit his brows. “Why hasn’t our food arrived yet?” He turned to Zhou Luoyang. “Are you hungry?” \n

Zhou Luoyang saw that Du Jing’s expression was normal. He asked, “Should I let you guys talk privately? I can eat outside.”\n

“It’s fine for you to stay,” Huang Ting said. “You just don’t seem like a private investigator.”\n

“He isn’t one,” Du Jing replied. “But yes, he can stay. What case are you looking into?”\n

“What case are you looking into?” Huang Ting shot back.\n

“What case are you looking into?”\n

“What case are you looking into?”\n

“Is it fun to put this on loop?” Zhou Luoyang cut in.\n

By now their food had arrived, and Zhou Luoyang began to grill the meat, while Du Jing sat there waiting to be fed. \n

“I have a feeling we aren’t investigating the same thing…Are you not going to do anything yourself? Just gonna wait to be served?” Huang Ting asked.\n

“I don’t know how to do it. Is there a problem?”\n

“He’s like this at home too,” Zhou Luoyang told Huang Ting.\n

“Make sure it’s well done.” Du Jing glanced at Zhou Luoyang’s hands.\n

Huang Ting remarked, “Different people really do have different ways of interacting with each other. I have a good friend whose lover never does any of the work when they eat out; he just sits and waits for the food…”\n

“Oh, so you know he’s the top?” Zhou Luoyang sniffed.\n

“My bad, that first impression stuck with me,” Huang Ting replied with the utmost sincerity.\n

Du Jing: “………………”\n

“But now I take back what I said. I don’t think you’re lovers.”\n

The three of them were quiet; the only sound to be heard was the sizzling of the meat on the grill. Zhou Luoyang was very hungry, but when the meat was done he gave it all to Du Jing, wrapped in fresh greens and placed neatly on his plate. The boss had been right—the meat here was very delicious.\n

Du Jing was not in a hurry. He waited patiently for Huang Ting to talk first. Huang Ting maintained a silent stalemate for a while. But he and Du Jing were at the same level, which made psychological warfare futile, so at last he took the initiative to speak. “I’m looking into a money laundering case.”\n

“Money laundering?” Zhou Luoyang’s curiosity was piqued. “What does money laundering have to do with an escape room?” \n

But Huang Ting didn’t utter a word. Du Jing swallowed a bite of meat, and then supplied, “I’m looking into international disappearances.”\n

Huang Ting and Du Jing silently faced each other. Huang Ting seemed to have ascertained a certain truth about the situation right away, and murmured, “Now things are getting interesting.”\n

“Go on, do tell,” Du Jing said. “I won’t take advantage of you, but there are certain things you’d have to ask my boss about, not me.”\n

Huang Ting found himself caught between laughter and tears. “You’re flattering me. After you got a new boss, you guys have been impenetrable. Your lips are sealed tight. Has it got anything to do with Cambodia and Vietnam?” \n

Du Jing didn’t answer the question, and instead told Zhou Luoyang, “Eat.”\n

Zhou Luoyang had decided to fill Du Jing’s stomach before digging in himself. He also felt obligated to liven up the mood.\n

“I really thought you were an academic,” he remarked. “I’m curious, are you in their group chat too?”\n

“Yes,” Huang Ting replied. “I’m straight—or at least I currently think I am. Not sure if that’ll always be the case.”\n

Zhou Luoyang nodded. “Very honest of you.” \n

He didn’t ask how Huang Ting and Du Jing had discovered that they worked in the same industry. He assumed that they could sense it as soon as they looked into each other’s eyes.\n

But Huang Ting had put on a very convincing act in the escape room. Once they got to the barbecue place, his gaze became as piercing as a hawk’s. Du Jing’s gaze was a different kind of dangerous—like a cheetah’s.\n

“There’s a money laundering scheme,” Huang Ting explained, having decided to tell them the truth, “launched in Vietnam. They use bitcoin to purchase a lot of gaming equipment, for a total market value of about one point two million USD.”\n

“Gaming equipment can go for that much?” Zhou Luoyang was stunned.\n

“There’s a considerable quantity involved, twenty or so pieces, which go for an average of sixty to one hundred thousand USD each. They’ll purchase and then resell them, convert profits into Chinese yuan, and extract it out of the country from underground money farms. We suspect that this organization has two fronts for money laundering. One is antiques, one is gaming equipment.”\n

Du Jing hummed in acknowledgement. “You’ve already found your suspect.”\n

“Yes,” Huang Ting confirmed. “The boss doesn’t typically show his face, but he’ll make an appearance after players have completed the escape room to explain things to them. Most of the escape room was his design, and he’s pretty pleased with his creation.”\n

Zhou Luoyang understood now. Huang Ting had joined the group chat and participated in the escape room solely for the sake of the very end, when he got to see the boss who showed up to explain the game to them. He ought to have seen the suspect’s pictures when he first took on the case; now he could confirm a match.\n

“Are you the only one working on this case?” Du Jing asked.\n

“Headquarters assigned a coworker, a retired member of the UN Peacekeeping Forces, to help me, but we haven’t gotten in contact yet. I don’t think that guy’s going to be very reliable.\n

“As of right now, the only thing we aren’t sure about is where these funds are coming from, what kind of illegal operations are generating the income. My colleagues suspect drug trafficking, but I don’t think that’s it. But if it’s human trafficking, then that makes much more sense. Let’s compare notes.”\n

“I have a gut feeling that this organization’s motives behind trafficking people has something to do with the escape rooms,” Du Jing said.\n

Huang Ting considered it for a moment, his brows drawn together. “True, it’s unlikely they can earn so much just by trading human beings.”\n

Zhou Luoyang was unable to follow their conversation from that point on, and Huang Ting didn’t bother to explain. Shortly after, Zhuang Li arrived. “Hi, Jing ge.”\n

“Eat,” Du Jing said curtly and glanced at Huang Ting. “This is our colleague.”\n

“Hi, brother-in-law,” Zhuang Li greeted Zhou Luoyang.\n

Zhou Luoyang: “……”\n

Zhuang Li sat down next to Huang Ting and laid some meat on the grill. He looked at him; neither Huang Ting nor Du Jing said anything, and the atmosphere was heavy.\n

“You think this has something to do with the dark web?” Huang Ting asked.\n

“Yes,” Du Jing answered concisely.\n

“How’s this got anything to do with the dark web?” Zhou Luoyang asked.\n

Huang Ting turned to Zhou Luoyang. “Didn’t you notice? When we went in this afternoon, there were employees monitoring us through the cameras the entire time. The music and the lift were manually operated.”\n

“Ah, that’s true.” Zhou Luoyang pondered it for a moment. But games like these were always monitored, firstly to prevent players from breaking out by brute force, and secondly so that they could offer assistance when needed and prevent issues with claustrophobia, fear of the dark, heart problems, or unstable emotions.\n

All of a sudden, Zhou Luoyang was struck with a realization. “So you guys think the people taken to Southeast Asia…were taken to participate in real-life, murderous escape rooms? And…it’s all broadcasted live for other people’s entertainment?” \n

Zhuang Li shuddered. “For real?! Jing ge, is it that serious?”\n

Huang Ting ran a hand through his hair, pensive. “At the moment, our most pressing concern is obtaining the web address of the broadcast.”\n

“That’s impossible. Forget it. You guys know how hard that’d be,” Du Jing said.\n

Huang Ting nodded and said to Zhou Luoyang, “We have come across relatively large-scale cases of sexual perversion and sadistic killings before. They’re pretty common on the dark web. But a real-life game at such a scale…This is actually the first time anyone’s suggested something like that. Why did you think that might be what’s going on?”\n

Neither Zhuang Li or Zhou Luoyang answered him. After a brief pause, Du Jing explained, “What might a comprehensive analysis of the victims’ educational background, IQ, etcetera suggest? Most of the missing persons are undergraduate students at university, or at least students at junior college. Generally speaking, they’re intelligent people. The perpetrators wouldn’t need to go after these targets if they only wanted to satisfy sexual perversions, to kill them off on a live broadcast. In that case, they’d only need to worry about their targets’ height, build, physical appearance, and age.”\n

Huang Ting nodded. “That’s reasonable.”\n

“I’ve been wondering all this time why they would kidnap educated males in their prime. If they’d taken people from Yunnan or even Myanmar, they would yield faster harvests and wouldn’t have stirred up any trouble. Now that I think about it, the only reasonable answer is that this demographic is the only one that can fulfill certain requirements.”\n

Zhou Luoyang suddenly shivered. From Du Jing and Huang Ting’s conversation, he was able to piece together a general idea of the situation.\n

A certain organization in Southeast Asia released an invitation on the dark web to their event, selected suitable candidates from all over the world, kidnapped them to the country the organization was based in, and designed for them an extremely complex escape room or some other kind of battle royale.\n

The event was geared towards particular crowds with particular inclinations. It was not broadcasted at fixed times, and one had to pay to access the stream. It allowed viewers to observe something akin to a wrestling ring: people being forced into committing genuine murder in order to save their own lives.\n

But the game couldn’t possibly have a winner, because no matter how many people survived, they would all be permanently silenced. Thus, the escape room became the first stage of the selection process. After the perpetrators selected suitable candidates, they would use emotional manipulation to lure them out of the country under the guise of taking them on vacation. \n

“The dark web is like the ocean, while its websites are like countless little islands. Without a compass, without a map, without coordinates, no one can hope to find them,” Du Jing explained.\n

“You need a navigator. Often, this will be an encryption key or USB. The computer used to log in may even need to be modified, or the phone used will be mailed directly to the customer,” Huang Ting continued.\n

Du Jing’s explanation was for Zhou Luoyang and Zhuang Li’s sake, of course. Truth be told, even Huang Ting’s words were for their sake. There was no way Du Jing didn’t already know these things, after all.\n

“Hidden web addresses? I’ve heard of that,” said Zhuang Li.\n

“It’s not that simple. When I was working in D.C., I saw a few URLs—all mojibake. Even if you have the address, you still can’t get in,” Du Jing added.\n

Huang Ting and Du Jing sank back into silence. Finally, Huang Ting said, “We’ll have to use realistic means to conduct the investigation. This’ll be tricky.”\n

But ultimately, this was all merely guesswork. In fact, they didn’t know where the victims had vanished to, nor did they know the source of the money laundering funds.\n

The only clue they did have was the case of the escape room boss’s money laundering, and they didn’t even have solid proof of that. They couldn’t alert the suspects of their investigation, or else the missing victims would never be found again.\n

“I’m leaving for Ho Chi Minh City shortly,” Du Jing said. “If you have anything for me, send the info over by the first Thursday after my National Day compensatory leave ends.”\n

“How are you getting there?” Huang Ting asked. “You won’t be able to act in Vietnam and Cambodia without an institution assisting you.” \n

“Sotheby’s,” Du Jing answered. “I have an invite.”\n

“Take me along with you,” Huang Ting immediately requested.\n

“Figure it out yourself. I haven’t eaten meat in days.”\n

Huang Ting: “…………”\n

Zhou Luoyang pressed a palm to his forehead.\n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nTranslated by beansprout.\n

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