The Secret of the Yoga Club: The Women's Identity is Not Simple

Every time, I would open WeChat, scroll to my chat with Raymond Lam, see the few words she sent last night without any reply, then lock my phone and put it back in my pocket.

A few minutes later, she took it out again to check, but there was still no reply. She stood at the end of the corridor on the third floor of the guesthouse, holding her phone and looking at the screen, her finger repeatedly tracing the edge of the WeChat icon.

After finishing the first round of meetings in the morning, she checked her phone again, then again during lunch. During her lunch break, she tossed and turned in bed, unable to fall asleep, so she sat up and turned on her phone again.

Raymond Lam's profile picture remains silent, with no updates.

She kept thinking about these questions on her drive home last night. During the more than forty minutes it took to drive back to the city from the unfinished building, her fingers on the steering wheel trembled slightly.

It wasn't the fear of being secretly filmed, but the realization that she had done that with Raymond Lam in the car of an unfinished building, in the wilderness where they could be discovered at any moment.

In a moment of impulsiveness, when she saw that message, her instinct was to escape. She thought that if she could sever this relationship, the situation from last night would never happen again.

But she didn't receive any reply, and instead started to panic. Lin Feng had handled everything, and he was the one cleaning up the mess afterward; he even injured his foot, so he must be feeling terrible right now.

But then he says, "Don't do this anymore," which is no different from kicking someone after they've crossed the river.

I took a deep breath, placed my phone on the windowsill in the hallway, braced my hands on the edge of the windowsill, lowered my head, and closed my eyes.

My mind was racing with all sorts of thoughts. I thought about the person who took the photos, and about Lin Feng saying that the person behind that person was a man named Ma Jinli.

Ye Qinghan opened her eyes, picked up her phone, and sent a message to the deputy captain of the Municipal Public Security Bureau's Criminal Investigation Division: "Help me investigate someone, Ma Jinli, the property manager of the Keda Hotel. Send me all the information you can find."

After sending the message, she put her phone in her pocket, straightened the collar of her police uniform, and turned to walk towards the conference room.

Her high heels clicked crisply on the terrazzo floor, and her back was ramrod straight.

No matter what happened last night, no matter what she's thinking now, she can't let anyone see anything amiss.

Meanwhile, in the office on the top floor of the Keda Hotel, the atmosphere was completely different.

Ma Jinli stood in front of the desk, head down, hands hanging at her sides.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, trickling down his temples and staining the carpet with dark dots. He dared not wipe it away, nor did he dare move.

Zuo Ning sat behind his desk, his face ashen, a cigarette between his fingers, the other resting on the glass ashtray on the desk.

The fat man knelt next to Ma Jinli, his face bruised and swollen, his left eye swollen into a slit, and a cut at the corner of his mouth that was still oozing blood.

There was a wound on his forehead caused by being hit by an ashtray; the blood had congealed, and dark red scabs were stuck above his eyebrows.

The gold chain around her neck had been broken during the struggle and was hanging limply on her collarbone.

Zuo Ning put a cigarette in his mouth, stood up, walked around the desk to the fat man, and looked down at him.

Then he flicked the cigarette butt at the fat man's face, the sparks splattering onto the fat man's cheek and burning a small blister. The fat man shuddered in pain, but remained kneeling, too afraid to move.

"You say you don't know?" Zuo Ning's voice was low, but every word carried a chill that sent a shiver down Ma Jinli's spine. "You've been keeping an eye on him with him for almost two weeks, and then he suddenly disappeared. The car's gone too. You say you don't know where he went?"

The fat man's voice was choked with sobs, his lips so swollen he could barely speak. "Master Zuo, I really don't know. Last night we were keeping watch outside Ye Qinghan's apartment complex, but I got so tired that I said I was going to a bar up ahead to spend the night, leaving him alone in the car to keep watch. Before I left, I told him to call me if anything happened. But I waited until this morning and he still hadn't contacted me. I called him, but his phone was off, so I rushed back to the parking lot to check, and the Santana was gone, and so was he. I didn't dare delay any longer, so I came back to report."

"Report?" Zuo Ning sneered, picked up the ashtray on the table, and smashed it down again.

The ashtray hit the fat man's shoulder, bounced, and rolled onto the carpet. The fat man groaned and collapsed to the floor, clutching his shoulder and curling into a ball. "You call this a report? You only report when the person has disappeared? What were you doing before?"

"I...I'm afraid of being scolded..."

"Do you fucking know what that skinny guy had? He had a camera! Maybe it had what I needed on it. Now he's gone, the equipment's gone, and you fucking come back and tell me you didn't know?!" Zuo Ning got angrier and angrier, kicking the fat man in the stomach. The fat man screamed and curled up even tighter.

Ma Jinli stood to the side, not daring to breathe. He had worked for Zuo Ning for so many years and had never seen Zuo Ning so angry.

His once handsome face was now bulging with veins, his eyes were wide open, and his eye sockets were bloodshot.

Zuo Ning sat back in his office chair and picked up his phone to browse. He used some connections to find out the approximate route of the Santana from last night through traffic surveillance.

Surveillance footage shows that the car departed from near Ye Qinghan's residential area around 11 p.m., drove a short distance towards the outskirts of the city, and then turned onto a side road without cameras.

After that, he never appeared in any surveillance footage again. The path led to an abandoned development zone in the northern suburbs, filled with unfinished buildings and wasteland—the kind of place where no one would go for days after an accident.

"Search every possible hiding place in that abandoned development zone in the south of the city, around the unfinished buildings. He must have followed something important last night, otherwise he wouldn't have driven away on his own. He's definitely in trouble now. Whether he's dead or alive, find him. Don't come back if you don't find him by tomorrow."

Ma Jinli nodded hurriedly and dragged the fat man, who was still curled up on the ground, out.

As they reached the door, Zuo Ning spoke again, her voice sinister. "Also, stop following Lin Feng for now. Keep a low profile while you're working."

Ma Jinli responded and pulled the fat man out of the office. In the corridor, he took out a tissue to wipe the sweat from his forehead and let out a long sigh.

Then he looked down at the fat man slumped against the wall, a complex light flashing in his eyes.

He had a feeling that the skinny guy was in trouble, most likely because he had been taken down by that kid, but he didn't dare tell Zuo Ning this.

The more important thing now is how to find the person.

If they still can't find him by tomorrow, Zuo Ning's words, "Don't come back," are definitely not a joke.