Ming Dongqi

Chapter 50

Ming Donglai was discharged from the hospital very quickly, and she went straight home afterward.

In the afternoon, she had a meeting with a lawyer.

After the lawyer left, she did not step out of the house at all. The only activity was a single Meituan delivery rider dropping off food at her door.

“That must be the dinner she ordered, right? Has she gone all day without eating?” Two police officers sat in a car parked across the street.

“Maybe she has food at home.”

The two officers ate their own takeout while they spoke. To make their stakeout easier today, they had ordered boxed lunches.

“Something’s not right.”

“What is it?”

The two of them quickly finished their dinner.

“She’s home alone and ordered delivery. At this distance, it should only take five minutes at most for the rider to hand her the food and come back out.”

The two men got out of the car, intending to check the situation. Just as they approached, they saw the rider exiting with a large bag.

the police intercepted the person. The rider was wearing a Meituan delivery hat and a face mask.

When the rider had gone in earlier, they had only seen a view from behind. Now they noticed that this rider’s build was somewhat similar to Ming Qingfu’s daughter, Ming Donglai.

The person wore a mask, so their face wasn’t clearly visible, leaving only a pair of slightly red eyes exposed.

“Is there something you need? I have to deliver my next order, I’m almost late.” Her voice was somewhat raspy.

She had clearly been crying.

“We’re police. This will only take a minute.”

“What’s this?” They pointed to the large bag in her hand.

“I just delivered a meal. The customer said she hasn’t been back in a long time and there was a lot of trash in the house. She asked me to help her take it down and said she’d give me an extra ten yuan.”

As she spoke, she opened the large bag. Inside were indeed several withered bouquets of flowers.

“Can you take off your mask?”

“Do I have to?”

“We’re just verifying your identity.”

The person removed the mask. The first thing they saw was a red birthmark on her face, covering almost the entire left side.

“Sorry.”

The rider put the mask back on and threw the trash into the bin.

As she walked away, her phone rang again.

The person on the other end asked, “What did she say? What’s the situation with the police?”

“She said the police haven’t discovered anything, but the body has been detained by them. It will take time before it can be claimed. She’s already processing the death certificate. Once the death certificate is issued, she can move… Ming Qingfu’s money.”

“Don’t you two even think about contacting the police, or your mother’s life is forfeit.”

The person on the other end began to mutter and curse, grumbling that the young woman didn’t know what was good for her. Originally, if they had just killed Ming Qingfu and Ming Donglai, they could have inherited Ming Qingfu’s estate directly. Now they had to take all these detours.

The young woman listened to the voice on the other end without saying a word.

Her mind drifted back to when she had been brought into the villa just now. The other woman had taken her to a room on the third floor.

Upon entering, the first thing she saw was a portrait of the Bodhisattva, followed by hand-copied Rebirth Mantras¹.

In the very center, an ancestral tablet was enshrined.

It read: “Spirit Tablet of Beloved Daughter, Ming Dongqi.”

“Born November 5, 1995. Died November 5, 1995.”

“Mom said she often dreamed of you. She dreamed you were crying, telling her you were hungry and that people were always bullying you. She went back to Guangcheng to find your grave, but that area had been developed and she couldn’t find it. She always felt you were a lonely ghost² wandering somewhere, so she set up this tablet for you…”

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No issues were found in Ming Qingfu’s social circles, so the focus shifted to Li Qingqing.

Yun Song had a slight memory of Li Qingqing’s man, Wu Jie. She remembered that back then, Li Qingqing’s medicine had to be picked up from town, but the family had no money. Wu Jie had taken an axe to the homes of the families who had harmed Li Qingqing to demand money.

That was the only thing she remembered.

Wu Jie was relatively easy to find. His personal records listed a residential address, and it was right here in Ping City.

Yun Song and her young apprentice knocked on the door. A woman in her thirties opened it. “Who are you looking for?”

“Is Wu Jie home?” Yun Song showed her ID and identified herself. “There’s a case that requires his cooperation in an investigation.”

“He hasn’t been home for a long time. So he ran off this time to hide from you people.” The woman spoke as she let Yun Song into the house.

“And you are?”

“I’m his former partner,” the woman said. “But if he’s done something, it has nothing to do with me. He’s been gone for several years this time. We’ve basically broken up.”

Yun Song inquired, “When was the last time you saw him? Did he say anything to you?”

“The last time I saw him…” The woman recalled, “March of 2019, I think. I forgot the exact day. He told me in the morning that he was going to strike it rich, but he never came back that night.”

“Did he say how he was going to strike it rich?”

“Then you don’t know him. That man thinks he’s going to strike it rich every single day. According to him, he can make a fortune doing anything.”

Wu Jie had indeed made a few fortunes when he was younger. In the nineties, he worked in scrap metal recycling. Later, after being investigated, he took his money and went out of town. On the way, he met migrant workers from Guangcheng. Hearing they were going to construction sites, he set his sights on construction. He became a foreman himself. At that time, the wave of migrant workers entering cities combined with the real estate boom allowed him to truly amass a large sum of money.

At his wealthiest, he had nearly three million in his hands. Once a person has money, they want even more, especially after coming into contact with truly wealthy people. He felt his money was coming in too slowly, so he followed others to learn about investing, and his money got tied up.

How could a person who once made a million in a single year go back to the days of earning five or six thousand a month through manual labor?

Consequently, Wu Jie was immersed almost every day in plans for how to strike it rich. The woman was no longer surprised by it.

“What kind of case is it that needs his cooperation?” the woman asked.

The apprentice said, “It’s still under investigation, we can’t disclose that.”

The woman gave an “oh” of understanding.

Yun Song asked, “Does he have any other friends? Anyone he associates with closely?”

“No. All those friends of his were tricked by his flowery words into investing in some project or another. In the end, everyone lost money, and no one speaks to him anymore.”

Yun Song asked a few more questions, and the woman answered them one by one.

Once the questioning was over, Yun Song gave her her contact information so the woman could reach her if she remembered anything else.

“Anything at all is fine. As long as it relates to Wu Jie.”

After Yun Song left, the woman felt a sense of unease. Since the police had come to her door, she wondered if Wu Jie had committed a crime or if he had been murdered.

As she walked back inside, she ran into her daughter coming from the inner rooms.

“Mom, what did those two people want to know about Wu Jie?”

“Don’t be disrespectful. He’s your stepfather, you should call him Uncle Wu.”

“Was he murdered?”

“What kind of daydream is that? We should thank our lucky stars if he hasn’t killed someone else out there.”

“I’m not making things up. One time Uncle Wu got drunk and grabbed my hand. He said he had three daughters and not a single one had a handle between their legs. He said it was definitely because he went soft and just threw the first daughter away instead of driving nails into her³, so that’s why us two female ghosts⁴ dared to be reincarnated into his family!”

“When did he say that?”

“It was that time I got a fifteen on my math test and you made me copy the exam fifty times. He had been out drinking with people, and when he came back and saw me doing my lines, he started talking to me.”

“Don’t listen to his nonsense! Go do your homework!”

“That’s not all. He also said he was going to find his eldest daughter, and then he’d be rich.”

The woman had no idea that Wu Jie had two other daughters. She didn’t think her own daughter would lie, so she took out the business card the police had just given her and made the call.

Yun Song received the message.

During their investigation, they had visited Ming Qingfu’s villa and had naturally seen the memorial tablet she kept for her eldest daughter.

Was that child still alive?

If the child was alive, and Wu Jie had gone to find her and then approached Ming Qingfu together, it would explain Ming Donglai’s current state of anxiety.

But what did all of this have to do with the family of three at the Scrap Recycling Station?

That family were scammers; what could they possibly swindle from Ming Qingfu?

Yun Song recalled the bedroom and memorial tablet prepared for the eldest daughter in the villa. Could it be related to that daughter?

When Yun Song used to handle cases in small towns, she had encountered scammers like this before. In one particular case, the fraudsters claimed that a deceased child could not find peace in the underworld⁵ and demanded the parents pay for elaborate religious rituals⁶.

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Translator’s Notes

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1. Rebirth Mantras: A Buddhist chant (Wang Sheng Zhou) intended to help the deceased find peace and be reborn in the Pure Land. Its presence suggests the mother’s deep guilt and desire for her daughter’s spiritual well-being. ↩
2. lonely ghost: In Chinese folklore, a ‘gu hun ye gui’ is a spirit with no living relatives to offer sacrifices or maintain their grave. Such spirits are believed to wander in hunger and misery, which explains the mother’s act of enshrining a tablet to provide a spiritual ‘home’. ↩
3. driving nails into her: Refers to a grim superstition where nails were driven into a deceased or discarded female infant’s coffin or body to prevent her soul from ‘returning’ to be reincarnated as another daughter in the same family, hoping the next child would be a boy. ↩
4. female ghosts: A derogatory way to refer to daughters in this context, implying they are unwanted spirits who have ‘stolen’ the place of a potential son. ↩
5. underworld: Refers to ‘Yinjian’, the realm of the dead in Chinese mythology and folk religion. It is governed by a celestial bureaucracy where souls are judged and reside before reincarnation. ↩
6. religious rituals: Specifically refers to ‘fashi’, ceremonies performed by Taoist priests or Buddhist monks. These rites are intended to appease spirits, provide merit to the deceased, or resolve spiritual disturbances. ↩