My yoga students: They're all amazing women.

When Ma Jinli came out of the Keda Hotel, the back of his shirt was soaked with cold sweat.

He stood next to the revolving door at the hotel entrance, lit a cigarette, took two deep drags, and then threw the cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it with the sole of his shoe.

The fat man followed behind him, clutching his forehead, which had been smashed by the ashtray. The bleeding had stopped, but dark red scabs were still visible above his eyebrows, making him look quite disheveled.

"Master Ma, what do we do now?" The fat man's voice was still trembling with tears.

Ma Jinli turned and glanced at him, his disgust undisguised. "What to do? You still have the nerve to ask what to do? Call everyone you can and go to that abandoned development zone in the south of the city. Search every unfinished building, every patch of grass, every ditch. Find them alive or dead. If you can't find them, just wait for Master Zuo to throw you into the river."

The fat man shuddered and quickly pulled out his phone to call for help.

An hour later, Ma Jinli led a dozen or so people to the abandoned development zone in the south of the city.

The development zone looks even more desolate during the day than at night, with a dozen unfinished buildings standing alone on the overgrown open space, their concrete frames blackened by wind and rain, and their walls covered with dead vines.

The ground was littered with broken bricks, cement blocks, and various construction debris. Occasionally, a few stray cats would dart out from the ruins, startling the thugs under his command.

Ma Jinli stood at the intersection where the Santana was last seen on surveillance footage last night, shielding his forehead from the sun with his hand as he surveyed the surrounding terrain.

The road was lined with waist-high weeds, and the tire tracks on the ground were haphazardly overlapping, making it impossible to tell which one was left by the Santana.

He ordered his men to split into three groups and search in different directions, leaving no unfinished building unchecked, and to report immediately any bloodstains, glass shards, tire tracks, or anything suspicious they found.

The search lasted for nearly two hours.

The sun was setting in the west, but the temperature hadn't dropped. The overgrown weeds in the abandoned development zone were stiflingly hot, and mosquitoes buzzed around people.

Ma Jinli's shirt was wet and dry repeatedly, and his forehead was covered in sweat, but he dared not stop to rest.

Zuo Ning's words, "Don't come back if you can't find it by tomorrow," kept echoing in his mind. He knew that Zuo Ning was a man of his word.

Just when he thought he was really going to go home empty-handed, a subordinate's voice came through the walkie-talkie: "Boss Ma, we found a homeless man near Building 3. He said he saw a car parked here last night."

Ma Jinli perked up and strode towards Building No. 3. The unfinished building was located in the southwest corner of the development zone. It was only three stories high, with vines climbing all over its concrete frame. On the ground floor, there were piles of old bedding and some salvaged plastic bottles.

A homeless man was leaning against a cement pillar on the first floor, rummaging through a plastic bag he had picked up. He looked to be about sixty years old, with messy hair covered in dust, clothes whose original color was unrecognizable, and a pair of worn-out canvas shoes on his feet.

Ma Jinli frowned, took out fifty yuan from his pocket, and handed it over. "Master, what did you see here last night?"

The homeless man took the money and examined it for a long time before putting it in his pocket after confirming that it was genuine.

He scratched his head with his dirty fingers, thought for a moment, and said, "Last night, around 11 o'clock, I was sleeping on the third floor. I was woken up by a noise, and when I looked down, there was a car parked in that open space below. The car light was on, and a man and a woman were doing 'that' in the back seat. The woman had big, white breasts, and I could see them quite clearly from this building. They did it for about an hour; that man was really going at it. Then, just as I was getting into it, suddenly there was a flash of white light, really bright, like lightning. Then the man jumped out of the car and chased after something, running very fast. Not long after, the woman also drove away. When I looked down from the window again, there was nothing there, not even the tire tracks had been erased."

When Ma Jinli heard the words "white light," his heart skipped a beat.

It should be the flash?

That skinny idiot must have forgotten to turn off the flash when he was secretly taking pictures with his phone, and then he got caught.

He quickly pulled two photos from his pocket and handed them to the homeless man. "Take a close look. Aren't these the man and woman from last night?"

The homeless man took the photo, squinted at it for a long time, then looked up at Ma Jinli, a troubled expression on his face. "Well, it's too dark. I couldn't see very clearly from the third floor, which is quite far away. Besides, my eyesight has been getting worse over the past two years. The man's outline is somewhat similar, and the woman's breasts are indeed quite large, somewhat resembling the woman in the photo, but I can't be sure. I only saw a general outline; I can't be 100% certain."

Ma Jinli then took out five hundred-yuan bills from his wallet and slapped them into the homeless man's hand, then told him to take a good look at them again.

He then found a few more photos. The homeless man's eyes lit up, and he stuffed the money into his pocket, changing his tune: "Yes, yes, it should be them. I just thought about it more carefully, and the man's profile is similar to the one in this photo, and the woman's chest matches too."

Ma Jinli put away the photos and had the homeless man taken back. Then he led the remaining men to conduct a more thorough search around Building 3, ordering them to turn over every inch of the ground and retrieve anything that did not belong to this vacant lot.

The search continued until evening, and the team members returned one after another to report. On a patch of gravel east of Building 3, someone found a small piece of black plastic with charred edges.

Several broken glass beads were found deep in the grass. Besides that, there were some broken white plastic shells and a few broken metal parts, with a faint, incomplete mark visible on one of the plastic shells.

"These are fragments of a memory card." Ma Jinli examined the plastic fragments in his palm, then squatted down and rummaged through the metal parts in the grass.

The camera was wrecked, the memory card was smashed, the casing was dismantled, everything that could be destroyed was destroyed.

The skinny guy's phone was also missing, probably destroyed as well.

He slowly stood up, threw the shards on the ground, and his mind had roughly pieced together what had happened last night.

The skinny guy managed to get a picture of something usable.

It could be a photo, or it could be a video.

He forgot to turn off the flash when he was taking a retake photo with his phone, and the people in the car noticed.

Then that kid surnamed Lin chased after them. As for the skinny guy himself, if he can't be found, he can't be found; it's perfectly normal for something to happen in a place like this.

A living person disappears into thin air, along with their car. There are only two possibilities: either they were buried somewhere that can't be found, or they were disposed of more thoroughly.

Regardless of the type, skinny people will never appear again.

Standing on the gravel ground, watching the sunset gradually turn red on the horizon, Ma Jinli suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him.

The skinny guy is gone, the camera is gone, and the car is gone too. The only witness is a homeless man with poor eyesight, and the only clue they can provide is his statement.

If he takes this clue back to Zuo Ning, Zuo Ning will definitely scold him to death.

But what chilled Ma Jinli even more than failing to deliver was another problem: what if Lin Feng could cleanly and efficiently dispose of a living person and a car, making all traces disappear without a trace within a dozen hours?

That means Lin Feng isn't as easy to deal with as he seems on the surface. Zuo Ning had always thought Lin Feng was just a young man who rose to power through cleverness and women, but now it seems that judgment might be completely wrong.

He became increasingly agitated as he thought about it. He turned around and saw the fat man squatting on the pile of rubble next to him, pressing a tissue against the wound on his forehead, muttering complaints under his breath.

Ma Jinli's anger flared up instantly. He walked over, grabbed the fat man by the collar, pulled him up, and then punched him in the face several times.

"If you hadn't gone to the bar all night and kept watch together, even if that kid chased after us, the two of you wouldn't have been able to take him down!" Ma Jinli panted heavily, his hands covered in the fat man's blood. "Now the guy's gone, the equipment's gone, all the leads are dead. Boss Zuo wants us to find him by tomorrow? Find him my ass!"

The fat man howled in pain as he was beaten, shrinking back and not daring to fight back. Several of his henchmen, unable to bear the sight, stepped forward and pulled Ma Jinli away.

A young man with dyed yellow hair cautiously asked, "Master Ma, how are we going to explain this to Master Zuo now?"

Ma Jinli straightened his collar, which had been pulled askew, and took a deep breath.

He wiped the blood on his pants, then lit a cigarette and put it in his mouth. "Take that homeless man with us. At least we have an eyewitness who can prove that Lin Feng and Ye Qinghan were here last night. Although it's not direct evidence, it's enough to calm Master Zuo down. As for the skinny guy and the camera, they're probably gone for good."

He got back into the car, took out his phone, and after hesitating for a long time, dialed Zuo Ning's number.

The phone rang twice before being answered, and Zuo Ning's cold voice came from the other end: "Have you found it?"

Ma Jinli briefly recounted the homeless man's testimony, the fragments found at the scene, and his own deductions.

It's said that the skinny guy probably got some usable footage, but during reshoots, the flash gave him away, and after Raymond Lam caught up with him, both he and the equipment were disposed of.

The scene showed signs of having been cleaned up; the other party did it very professionally, and there were no remaining clues.

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

Ma Jinli held his phone, his palms sweaty.

Listening to Zuo Ning's heavy breathing on the other end of the phone, one could sense that the other person was suppressing a fit of rage.

Then Zuo Ning spoke. Her voice was unusually calm, so calm that it made Ma Jinli even more uneasy. "Bring that homeless man back. I want to question him myself."