The so-called farm was a village nestled against a mountain. While the soil there wasn’t suitable for growing crops, it was perfect for cultivating Chinese medicinal herbs. The shrewd villagers began switching to growing herbs, which proved quite profitable over the years. Neighbors followed suit, some with three mu, others with five, and gradually the village became known for its medicinal herbs. Many herb merchants and wholesalers would come regularly each year to make purchases.
Yan Huaishan was among the first to spot this business opportunity. He felt that the current small-workshop approach of individual households was inefficient. Ambitious as he was, he wanted to consolidate the village’s resources, transforming the scattered self-sufficient villagers into his employees—establishing a Chinese medicine company that would both purchase from others and maintain its cultivation bases.
Though the idea was good, implementation proved to be a long journey. First, his existing business already required enormous time and energy. Second, there were layers of procedures, countless approvals, and the need for villagers’ consent. By the time he died, he hadn’t seen the company break ground.
The subsequent developments were all facilitated by Lin Xirou. By the time Lin Ling entered high school, the base had officially begun operations, and Lin Xirou was rarely home, spending most of her time at the base.
During the summer break of her second year in high school, Lin Ling went to the farm to escape the heat. Yan Tuo was also there, earning his graduation “social practice” credits.
The base had a three-story building covering a large area, used for storage and preliminary processing of medicinal herbs—washing, slicing, drying, and so on. On her first day, Lin Ling decided to climb up and down the building twenty times daily for weight loss.
Right from the start of her running routine, she noticed the building wasn’t just three stories: there was space below ground level, though the stairway leading down was locked behind an iron door. It was said to store discarded machinery and substandard herbs scheduled for destruction at year’s end.
This brought to mind dark basements, cobweb-covered old equipment, and scurrying rats. Lin Ling had zero interest in what lay behind that iron door.
That day, when she went down to the bottom floor, she found the iron door unlocked, slightly ajar, with what seemed to be Lin Xirou’s voice coming from within.
Lin Ling felt a spark of joy—she hadn’t seen Lin Xirou for quite a while. She loved this “Aunt Lin,” who was the most gentle and caring person to her in the whole world.
She excitedly trotted over and through the large iron door. Inside was a completely different world from outside—dark, silent, cluttered. Discarded furniture and machinery were piled everywhere, with dust floating in the beam of light from the door gap.
Lin Ling doubted her ears—how could Lin Xirou’s voice be here? She was a high-level executive, the big boss; even for inspections, she wouldn’t come to such a ghostly place.
She was turning dejectedly to leave when suddenly, from deep within, came a man’s agonized scream.
The scream arose suddenly and lasted only a second or two, but it was painful. Lin Ling’s hair stood on end, but being timid, she could only whisper shakily: “Who’s there?”
No answer came, but after a while, low, mournful sounds emerged, too faint to make out clearly. Lin Ling hesitated, then moved toward the sound on light feet.
Looking back, it was fortunate that surveillance cameras weren’t common in those days, or she would have been discovered immediately.
At the end of the first basement level hung very heavy plastic curtains, the kind large shopping malls use in winter for soundproofing, heat retention, and wind blocking. Light came from behind the curtains.
Lin Ling swallowed hard and lifted the curtain to enter.
There was another stairway leading down—the basement had more than one level.
As she crept down several steps, the sounds became clearer.
It was a man crying and begging, his voice weak and spent, as if that earlier scream had consumed all his strength. Lin Ling heard him say: “Please, let me go. I’ll give you all the money. I have a daughter, An’an’s only in ninth grade. If I die, she’ll be helpless, an orphan. What will become of her?”
Then he cried again, devastatingly.
Lin Ling trembled all over, thinking she’d stumbled upon a crime scene—someone being robbed and murdered.
Suddenly, she heard Lin Xirou’s voice, gentle and kind: “Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of your daughter.”
Aunt Lin? Lin Ling’s mind went blank: How could it be Aunt Lin? How could Aunt Lin be robbing and killing people? She’s so rich!
The man’s screams came again, accompanied by the thudding sounds of clubs striking flesh and bone. Even without seeing it, Lin Ling could imagine the unbearable scene. She collapsed on the stairs, hugging her knees and shaking uncontrollably. During this time, she heard several more exchanges.
One was Lin Xirou saying: “Be careful, don’t kill him, leave him barely alive.”
One was Xiong Hei saying: “Understood, I know the limits.”
Xiong Hei had appeared suddenly by Lin Xirou’s side in recent months, a tower of a man with fists as big as a child’s head. His real name was Sun Xiong, but due to his bear-like build and dark complexion, he was nicknamed “Black Bear.” Lin Xirou said Xiong Hei was a bodyguard she’d hired from out of town—in business, revenge was common, so it wasn’t unusual for bosses to hire a few bodyguards.
The remaining two statements came from the beaten man.
The first was: “My bones, my bones are broken… I’ve done nothing to wrong you, heaven… heaven help me, An’an, An’an…”
The second was: “May you die terrible deaths, terrible deaths…”
The weak moaning repetition of “terrible deaths” gradually faded. Lin Ling took a long while to calm down before shakily descending a few more steps.
The space below was empty of people, but there was a pool of blood and a thick trail of blood extending outward, growing fainter with distance. Xiong Hei had dragged the person away, with Lin Xirou following.
Lin Ling stood before the blood pool, trying to convince herself: This must be a bad person, someone who had harmed Aunt Lin, so Aunt Lin was taking harsh revenge—vigilante justice was illegal, of course, but adult matters were complicated, perhaps… perhaps Aunt Lin had no choice.
Reason told her to turn back immediately, climb the stairs, exit through that iron door, pretend she’d seen nothing, that nothing had happened. But her legs wouldn’t obey, trembling as they carried her down to the floor and further in—she wanted to know where they’d dragged the man. Aunt Lin had ordered to “leave him barely alive”—did she want to follow television dramas, keeping him alive for prolonged torture?
Or perhaps, in her heart, she simply couldn’t believe Aunt Lin would do such terrible things, and needed to see with her own eyes to accept it.
The second basement level was quite large, divided into different sections with storage rooms and cultivation rooms, though many weren’t fully built. There were many corridor intersections, and Lin Ling didn’t know which way to turn. After wandering, she came to a cultivation room—a dead end.
Lin Ling tried the handle, and surprisingly, it turned.
She couldn’t find the light switch, so she peered in using the corridor light.
The first thing she noticed was the smell of soil. In the middle of the room was a large area without cement or flooring, just raw underground soil, divided into three equal plots each about the size of a single bed. Each was covered with an arch-shaped plastic canopy, like miniature versions of common greenhouse tunnels.
The three mini-greenhouses weren’t adjacent but spaced about half a meter apart, with red brick paths between them.
How strange—what precious Chinese herbs needed to be grown underground with protective membranes? Though Lin Ling knew little about medicinal herbs, she knew “all things grow by sunlight.” She’d never heard of growing things in such a deep basement.
She approached the greenhouse nearest the door, crouched down, and lifted the plastic membrane to look inside.
Empty, as if the seeds hadn’t yet sprouted.
She lifted the second one.
Also seemingly empty.
The second wasn’t empty. If she had looked more carefully, she would have noticed slight movements under the soil, rather like a giant earthworm hidden below.
She lifted the last one.
As soon as she did, her whole body jerked in shock—not exactly from fear, but from the unexpected sight: inside lay a naked middle-aged woman.