[Cloud City · Public Security Bureau · Captain Lin's Office]
Chen Wan's mother was named Chen Xiulan.
Captain Lin's tone was notably heavier than usual as he placed a thin stack of household registration documents on the desk.
"Father: Chen Guoming, deceased—heart attack when Chen Wan was twelve. Mother: Chen Xiulan, currently fifty-seven." Captain Lin's finger tapped a line on the page. "Household registration transferred from Cloud City to Linjiang City in the neighboring province, then back to Cloud City. Two-year gap in the middle. No records of any kind."
"Two-year gap?" Yin Wuwang asked.
"She ran." Captain Lin was blunt. "Owed gambling debts, skipped town. I had someone pull the Linjiang records—she had gambling debts there too. After bouncing around for two years, she came back to Cloud City. Probably figured she couldn't survive out there either."
Xie Qingyan stood beside Yin Wuwang, head lowered over the documents. Chen Xiulan's photo was printed in the upper left corner of the registration page—a haggard middle-aged woman, deep lines at the corners of her eyes, lips pressed into a thin line. The photo was several years old, but she looked a decade past her actual age.
"What was she gambling on?" Yin Wuwang asked.
"Underground casinos. Baccarat, poker, online gambling—you name it." Captain Lin pulled out another document. "I ran her credit history—it's a wreck. Bank loan defaults, overdue microloans, private lending—and eventually she borrowed her way to Dragon Brother."
The office went quiet for two seconds.
"Ten million," Captain Lin said. "Chen Xiulan owes Dragon Brother ten million yuan."
Yin Wuwang and Xie Qingyan exchanged a glance.
Ten million. A perfect match for the figure on Chen Wan's contract.
"But the debtor on the contract is Chen Wan," Xie Qingyan said.
"Correct." Captain Lin leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. "The debt was Chen Xiulan's, but Chen Wan shouldered it. How exactly it transferred from mother to son—the contract doesn't say. But the timeline tells us: the year Chen Xiulan came back from Linjiang was the same year Chen Wan mortgaged the bar to Dragon Brother."
"Any chance Dragon Brother coerced him?" Yin Wuwang asked.
Captain Lin shook his head. "The contract terms don't suggest it. Eight percent annual interest, ten-year term—in that world, those are remarkably restrained. If Dragon Brother had forced it, he wouldn't have offered such lenient repayment terms."
"So Chen Wan went voluntarily," Xie Qingyan said.
"Voluntarily." Captain Lin's voice carried the particular gravity of a veteran detective. "A twenty-five-year-old young man walked into Dragon Brother's office of his own free will and traded his bar and ten years of his freedom to pay off his mother's gambling debts."
Yin Wuwang connected the thread—Chen Xiulan gambled, racked up debts, fled for two years, and when she came back, the creditors followed. Chen Wan took on the ten million for his mother, mortgaged his bar, and spent five years paying back five million six hundred thousand.
A hundred-square-foot studio. Expired lunches. A smile for every customer at the bar.
All for a mother who couldn't stop gambling.
"One more thing." Captain Lin's voice dropped. "Chen Xiulan's gambling didn't start recently. I found records going back to when Chen Wan was fifteen—three years after Chen Guoming died."
Yin Wuwang did the math: Chen Wan lost his father at twelve; his mother started gambling when he was fifteen. He'd been dealing with her gambling since adolescence.
A person who'd been cleaning up after his mother since fifteen—by twenty-five, it was second nature. That's why he could walk into Dragon Brother's office and calmly sign that contract. Shouldering his mother's burdens was the only skill he'd ever learned.
"Where is Chen Xiulan now?" Yin Wuwang asked.
"Unknown." Captain Lin shook his head. "Last recorded appearance in Cloud City was three years ago. Registration's still active, but the person can't be found. Might have fled again, or—"
He didn't finish, but the meaning was clear.
"You're cleared to go see Dragon Brother." Captain Lin closed the folder. "You've now got the debt contract, repayment records, and Chen Xiulan's gambling background. Those are your cards."
He looked at Yin Wuwang.
"But Dragon Brother is a businessman. He won't give you anything for free. You need to make him feel that cooperating is a better deal than not."
Yin Wuwang gave a single nod.
On their way out, Little Lu poked his head up from his workstation: "Jiang-ge! Where are you headed? Want me to—"
"No need to follow." Yin Wuwang didn't turn around.
"Long Teng Tower?" Little Lu's nose for intel was sharp as ever. "You're going to see Dragon Brother? Be careful, Jiang-ge! That guy—"
"Got it."
Little Lu's voice faded behind them. Yin Wuwang pushed open the stairwell door, and he and Xie Qingyan descended one after the other. Only their footsteps in the stairwell—one light, one heavier—bouncing between the concrete walls.
"Did you catch Captain Lin's tone just now?" Yin Wuwang said as they walked.
"He was warning us. And not just about Dragon Brother." Xie Qingyan's pace didn't falter. "He didn't tell us Chen Xiulan's full story. What she did during those two missing years, how the debt ended up on her son—the contract doesn't say, but Captain Lin has his theories."
"He held some back so we'd have to get it from Dragon Brother ourselves."
"Exactly." Xie Qingyan pushed open the fire door to the parking garage. "If Dragon Brother's version matches what Captain Lin already has, he's telling the truth. If it doesn't—"
"Then this thread goes deeper than we thought." Yin Wuwang finished.
That was Captain Lin's way. A veteran detective never laid all his cards out at once. He held one back and let you verify it yourself.
The parking garage air was cool, carrying the damp cement smell particular to underground spaces. Yin Wuwang pressed the key fob; the car lights flashed twice.
He opened the trunk and took out two bottles of water. One he placed in the cup holder by the driver's seat. The other—
The other he handed directly to Xie Qingyan.
The motion was entirely natural. So natural that he'd already completed it before registering what he'd done.
Xie Qingyan took the water.
Yin Wuwang settled into the driver's seat, hands on the steering wheel, when a voice went off inside his skull—
Wait.
There was no one else in the car.
No Little Lu in the parking garage, no Captain Lin, no NPCs of any kind. The surveillance cameras couldn't see inside the vehicle. There was no one in this space who required "performance."
Why had he just handed over a bottle of water?
It wasn't a matter of grabbed two out of habit—the moment he'd opened the trunk, his hands had already sorted themselves: left hand, mine; right hand, Fuguang's. The allocation had been completed the instant the trunk lid went up, faster than thought.
Yin Wuwang gripped the steering wheel, staring at the concrete wall beyond the windshield.
His hands had betrayed his brain.
"Going?" Xie Qingyan had already unscrewed the cap and taken a sip.
"Going." Yin Wuwang started the engine, reversed, turned, drove up the ramp.
The car emerged from the garage and merged into street traffic. Late October sunlight poured through the windshield, drawing a dividing line across the center console between them.
[End of V2_Chapter 51]
Next: "There Was No One Else in the Car"—Seven Words This Sovereign Has No Rebuttal For