Harvest

……

“Heh heh, Ye Shuang, you think you’ve won?” Surrounded by Ye Shuang and the others, Tang Hao suddenly began to laugh. Then he roared, “There’s no way you can defeat me! Do you know how much effort I’ve put into surpassing you?”

“I climbed up step by step, step by step, in the company…”

Before Tang Hao could finish, Ye Shuang’s iron rod came crashing down on him. A scream like something straight out of Tom and Jerry rang through the factory.

Three strikes were enough to shatter his arrogant spirit. Big Brother, I’m one of your own!

“Cut the crap.” Ye Shuang gripped the rod and spoke expressionlessly.

Who cared how hard he had worked?

By then, Tang Hao was already sprawled on the ground with an expression that made him look as if he wished he were dead. Seeing that the man still refused to say anything, Ye Shuang glanced at Fugui beside him. “You’re better at interrogations.”

Tang Hao: “…”

“Even if I die…” he said through gritted teeth.

“Great! Then let’s start by cutting off your little buddy,” Fugui said with a beaming smile.

“W-What?!”

“Oh, don’t be scared. It won’t affect your ability to pee.” Fugui clapped his hands. “Boys, take all of them back.”

“Yes, Big Sister!!”

The moment Fugui finished speaking, the rolling shutter door behind him was smashed open. Two vans came barreling in, and more than a dozen bread-men rushed out and dragged all the thugs on the floor into the vehicles.

“W-Wait! How could you use such underhanded methods?” Tang Hao glared at him.

“Underhanded? This is perfectly legitimate,” Ye Shuang retorted.

Under Tang Hao’s terrified gaze, the van doors slowly closed.

“Shall we head back?” Fugui asked with a smile.

Ye Shuang, however, showed no reaction. He searched the surrounding area with his eyes before saying, “Fugui, send some people to search this place. Search it thoroughly.”

“Oh? No problem!”

Ye Shuang also began looking around. He had always felt that something was off, as though someone had been watching him.

At last, his footsteps stopped in front of a plastic barrel.

The black plastic barrel looked perfectly ordinary. It was just a regular industrial-grade plastic barrel filled with garbage, completely unremarkable.

Just then, Fugui came over. “We’ve searched the place, Little Shuangshuang. There’s nothing suspicious here.”

“Fugui.”

“What is it~?”

“Take a look at this plastic barrel. Don’t you think something’s strange about it?” Ye Shuang pointed at the barrel, which stood about a meter and a half tall.

“Hmm… It looks like an ordinary plastic barrel you’d find in a factory. I guess it was abandoned here?”

“No. The marks on this barrel are much newer than anything else in this abandoned factory, even though someone tried to make it look old.”

As he spoke, Ye Shuang reached out and ran his hand over the barrel’s surface. Then, as if he had noticed something, he tapped one spot with his finger.

“As I thought…”

Ye Shuang crouched down and discovered a tiny hole in the outside of the barrel. Inside it was a miniature camera! Because of its color, the black pinhole camera had blended perfectly into the black plastic barrel.

“A camera?” Fugui stared at the hole in surprise.

Together, the two of them tipped the barrel over. After searching inside it, they pulled out the pinhole camera.

The camera even had its own battery. Ye Shuang held it in his hand.

“Who planted it? Tang Hao?”

“No, it wasn’t him…” Ye Shuang said. Tang Hao had no reason to do something like this. He removed the memory card from the camera and handed it to Fugui. “It’s yours now, Fugui.”

“Have the brothers search again and see if there are any more cameras like this.”

“Oh ho ho, sure thing.”

Now that they had a clear target, more than a dozen burly men began searching every hidden corner. In the end, they found two more similar devices.

“Big Sister, we found two more!”

“Good. Keep looking!”

“Got it!”

Everyone conducted a thorough, floor-to-ceiling search. Once they were certain there were no more cameras, they set off back.

After Ye Shuang returned to the car, he discovered several new messages on his phone. They were all from Chen Qin and Bai Yuyou.

After all, Ye Shuang had disappeared early that morning, and they had no idea whether he had gone out to buy breakfast or had something else to take care of.

Ye Shuang replied to their messages directly, though he definitely wouldn’t be going home for lunch.

There was the footage from the cameras, as well as Tang Hao’s situation. He wanted to deal with everything today.

After spending some time returning to the city, Ye Shuang and Fugui arrived at Fugui’s company.

Unexpectedly, Peach was there as well.

She was dressed in black-and-white business attire, looking nothing like a student.

“Ah, Brother Ye.” Peach was also surprised to see Ye Shuang there.

“I have something to take care of. Why aren’t you at school today?” Ye Shuang remembered that today wasn’t the weekend, so Peach should have been attending classes.

“I have something to deal with today too, so I took the day off.” Peach smiled.

“I see.”

After exchanging a few brief words, Peach noticed Tang Hao, who was being held down like a dead dog. “He… is he the one who…”

“Yeah. Tang Hao. He used to work for me, and he’s also the one who stabbed your Sister Chen Qin.”

As soon as she heard that it was Tang Hao, disgust and cold fury appeared on Peach’s face. “Brother Ye, why don’t you leave him to me?”

“No need, sweetheart. Let Mommy handle it.” Fugui reached out and poked Peach on the cheek. Although he was smiling brightly, anyone who knew Fugui well could tell that his smiling eyes were filled with icy coldness.

He had grown up together with Chen Qin. It was impossible for the bond between them not to run deep. Otherwise, when something had happened to Chen Qin, he would never have gone to such lengths to track down Tang Hao—even monitoring his family members along the way.

“Little Shuangshuang, you can wait outside with Little Peach for a while. The scenes inside won’t be very pleasant to watch~”

“Sure.” Ye Shuang had no objections. Professional matters were best left to professionals.

He also wanted to see whether the memory card contained any useful information.

After Fugui took Tang Hao into the room to “have some tea,” Ye Shuang transferred all the data from the memory card onto a computer.

There was quite a lot of footage. The earliest recording was from half a month ago.

Most of the footage showed several corners of the factory, but they were all empty. It didn’t even include the footage from when the cameras were first installed. It seemed that the cameras had been activated remotely.

“They were that cautious?” Ye Shuang was slightly surprised, but he could only speed up the playback and continue watching.

Before long, a figure appeared on the screen. Ye Shuang took one look and recognized him as Tang Hao.

At the time, Tang Hao was wearing a thick coat and a mask. After arriving at the factory, he tidied the place up a little, then took out his phone and appeared to be talking to someone.