🌸 chapter 12: Uncontrollable
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“We’ve been tailing it for three streets,” he tapped the steering wheel.
Cheng Shubai closed his laptop, the metal latch clicking softly. In the mirror, Qi Ye saw him remove his glasses; his lashes lowered, hiding the sharpness in his eyes.
“Change lanes before the tunnel up ahead.”
Tyres cut through pooled water, sending up fan-shaped sprays. The Buick followed and swerved sharply, nearly scraping the barrier. Qi Ye let out a cold laugh and floored the accelerator. The engine roared as Cheng Shubai, with one hand, undid his suit button and pulled up a tablet to bring up the map.
“Next intersection, into the logistics park.”
“Works for me.” Qi Ye jerked the steering wheel hard.
A steel maze of stacked containers loomed in the rain like a silent fortress. By the time the Buick reached the corner of Warehouse 3, the grey Maybach had already vanished without a trace. Only two fog lights remained glowing strangely in the rain. Beneath them stood a reflective traffic cone with a printed note stuck on it:
“Assistant Li, your tyre is flat.”
By the time Qi Ye came out of the surveillance room, the rain had eased slightly. Cheng Shubai leaned against the warehouse rolling door, phone light outlining the tense line of his jaw.
“The Li family’s dogs have a good nose,” Qi Ye said, tossing his car keys. “They picked up the scent just three days after Chuang Cheng registered.”
Cheng Shubai suddenly reached up, brushing a water droplet from Qi Ye’s cheek with his thumb. “How about naming the new studio ‘Jingwei’?”
Rain hammered the warehouse roof in dense waves. Qi Ye narrowed his eyes, glancing at Cheng Shubai’s palm. A brass key lay there.
“You carved this?”
“Mm.” Cheng Shubai slipped the key into Qi Ye’s pocket. The cold metal pressed against his thigh through the fabric. “East district old shipyard renovation project. A gift.”
His phone vibrated. Zhou Wen’s name flashed on the screen, the background noise chaotic like a market in uproar. Cheng Shubai answered and listened for only three seconds before switching to speaker.
“…The wutong tree has been splashed with red paint!”
Qi Ye’s knuckles tightened until they went white. Cheng Shubai, however, simply lowered his head and straightened his loosened tie.
“Pull up the surveillance. Check whether the person who did it has a scorpion tattoo on the web between their thumb and index finger on the left hand.”
Riffling papers could be heard through the phone. “There is! President Cheng, how did you—”
“Standard for Li family hired thugs,” Cheng Shubai cut the call. Rain filled the warehouse again in silence. He suddenly pressed Qi Ye back against a container wall. The cold metal made him shiver.
“Afraid?”
Qi Ye gave a cold laugh. “Afraid you can’t handle it.”
Cheng Shubai let out a low chuckle, his teeth grazing Qi Ye’s ear. “Want to test me?”
Three hours later, a copper plaque reading “Jingwei Design” was mounted on the weathered brick wall of the old shipyard.
Qi Ye kicked open the creaking iron door. A vast, two-hundred-square-metre high-ceiling space unfolded before them. The skeletal frame of an abandoned crane hung overhead. Design drafts covered an entire floor-to-ceiling window wall. At the centre sat a long oak table, and on it was a wutong sapling, its roots wrapped in damp moss and planted in a concrete pot.
Cheng Shubai tore off the label on the sapling:
“Ancient Tree Triple-Grafting Seedling, Code QY-CS01.”
“Try to do fewer illegal things,” Qi Ye said, rolling the brass key between his fingers, its edge pressing into his palm.
Cheng Shubai took the key, inserted it into the electrical panel, and the entire studio lit up at once. Track lights snapped on, precisely illuminating the design desk, and a platinum ring pinned beneath the drawings caught the light.
Inside the ring, intersecting longitude and latitude lines held a broken diamond that burst into cold starlight.
“Legally cultivated,” Cheng Shubai said, sliding the ring back onto his ring finger. “A registered municipal ancient tree propagation project.”
A typhoon warning flashed blood-red on the phone screen. When Qi Ye kicked open the emergency stairwell door, a metal trash bin was already being slammed repeatedly against the wall by the wind.
“The cantilevered basket is stuck on the 17th floor,” the engineering supervisor’s walkie-talkie crackled. “The rescue team hasn’t arrived yet. Two workers are trapped up there!”
Cheng Shubai had already secured his safety harness. His rain-soaked shirt clung tightly to his back, the sharp lines of his shoulder blades protruding under the fabric. He grabbed the anemometer from Qi Ye’s hand, the LCD numbers flickering wildly in the hurricane.
“It’s over the alert threshold!” Qi Ye shouted, his voice swallowed by the rain.
Cheng Shubai shoved the device back into his arms. There was blood on the metal casing, his palm had been cut by a safety buckle, and the wound on his thumb was still bleeding, the red line crawling up toward his sleeve.
“I won’t die,” Cheng Shubai said, clipping on his helmet. The steel cable of the lift above them let out a groaning screech.
Qi Ye suddenly grabbed the lock of his safety belt from behind. “I’m going up.”
The hurricane whipped shards of glass between them like blades. Cheng Shubai turned and twisted Qi Ye’s wrist with one hand, the force almost crushing bone.
“I’m the legal representative of the new studio,” he said, his eyes dark and unsettling under the helmet shadow. “If anyone’s going to prison, it’ll be me first.”
When the lift reached the 15th floor, the suspended basket was swinging violently like a pendulum. Cheng Shubai grabbed the railing barehanded and climbed in. His safety rope scraped against the concrete edge, sending out sparks.
From the surveillance screen, Qi Ye saw him kneeling in a pool of leaking water, using a blade to cut through the electrical wire tangled around a worker’s ankle.
A burst of blue electricity tore through the rain.
When Qi Ye smashed open the control room door, Cheng Shubai was already pushing the last worker onto the rescue ladder. His left shoulder uniform was torn open, blood and rain streaming down, while he still held half a severed wire in his hand.
“Damn it…” Qi Ye’s wrench clattered to the ground.
The emergency corridor was packed with stretchers and paramedics. Cheng Shubai leaned against a fire cabinet on the floor. A medic cut open his sleeve, revealing a palm-sized shard of glass embedded in his forearm, its edges already darkened.
“The circuit was modified,” Cheng Shubai said suddenly.
He opened his palm. A burnt relay lay there, its metal casing engraved with the eagle emblem of the Li Group.
Qi Ye stepped on the component, crushing the stainless steel into a twisted shape. He bent down and tore the blood-soaked hem of Cheng Shubai’s shirt, tying it tightly above the wound.
“The Li family?” he asked.
“The Li nephew was bailed out last night,” Cheng Shubai said, wincing from the pain but still smiling faintly. “Your butterfly knot… hss… has gotten worse.”
The ambulance lights turned the rain outside into a swirling red and blue vortex. Qi Ye clenched the bloodied cloth as he climbed into the vehicle. He saw Cheng Shubai sending an email, the screen light illuminating his pale face. The recipient field read: “Ancient Tree Protection Foundation.”
“You’re still working at a time like this?” Qi Ye snatched the phone.
Cheng Shubai leaned his head against the window, eyes closed. “Buying insurance for the wutong tree.”
“…”
The antiseptic smell in the emergency room made Qi Ye’s temples throb. Cheng Shubai lay face down on the treatment table as tweezers clinked out shards of glass from his back into a tray.
Qi Ye stared at the old scar on his shoulder blade, left from seven years ago when he had shielded him from falling steel. Now, layered with new wounds, it looked like a rusted vine growing across his back.
“No anaesthetic for the stitches?” the nurse asked, holding up the needle.
Cheng Shubai shook his head. His bloodied left hand suddenly grabbed Qi Ye’s wrist. “Lend me a light.”
“Bear with it.”
The dull sound of flesh being pierced by sutures echoed through the room. Cheng Shubai’s knuckles turned white as he clenched. By the time the last stitch was done, both of them were drenched in cold sweat.
“Jingwei Studio…” Cheng Shubai’s voice was hoarse, almost unrecognisable. “We’re still unveiling it tomorrow?”
Qi Ye shoved painkillers into his mouth. “Just lie down.”
Late at night, only the tower crane’s red warning light flickered through the rain at the construction site. Qi Ye lifted the tarp of a temporary shed. Cheng Shubai was sketching under a camping lamp, a bandage bulging over his left shoulder.
“The Li family bribed the electrician,” Cheng Shubai said, tapping the relay photo with his pen. “The basket’s counterweight system was tampered with.”
The blueprint showed a full intelligent security system. Sensor nodes dotted the building model like a constellation of stars.
Qi Ye suddenly snatched the pen from his fingers. A streak of red ink cut across the circuit diagram.
“Cheng Shubai.”
The camping light was running out of power, its glow dim and rusted. Cheng Shubai looked up at him, his lashes casting fine shadows under his eyes.
“Back when you shielded me from that steel frame…” Qi Ye pressed his fingers against the old scar on his back. “Were you also this fearless?”
Cheng Shubai suddenly smiled. He took Qi Ye’s hand and pressed it against his own chest. His heartbeat thudded through the bandage into his palm.
“I’m scared now,” he said.
Puddles left behind by the passing typhoon reflected the red lights of tower cranes, like shattered diamonds scattered across the ground. Qi Ye pulled out a velvet box and tossed it into Cheng Shubai’s arms. The platinum ring rolled half a turn under the light, its engraved longitude and latitude lines wrapping around a tiny flame.
“It’s secured,” Qi Ye said, staring at him. “Lose it again and I’ll weld it onto your bones.”
Cheng Shubai only smiled and didn’t answer.
In the distance, the newly planted wutong sapling trembled in the wind and rain, its roots quietly digging into the damp night.
The tail end of the typhoon swept across the hospital window frames, rain lashing against the glass with a humming vibration.
Cheng Shubai pushed a tablet toward him without turning over. The screen was lit with structural diagrams, red markings pinned across load-bearing points.
“The basket counterweight lock was replaced with a different model,” his voice was muffled into the pillow. “Stock from Li’s Heavy Industry.”
Qi Ye wiped along the edge of the wound with a cotton swab. Pus and blood oozed out in a yellow froth. Cheng Shubai’s muscles tensed sharply, sweat sliding down his spine into his waistband.
“The Li nephew is in jail now,” Qi Ye said, tossing the swab away. “His father still has the time to pull something like this?”
“He’s panicking,” Cheng Shubai suddenly said, sitting up. “The Ancient Tree Foundation froze his overseas accounts this morning.”
Wind and rain filled the hospital room. Qi Ye pressed a fresh bandage onto the wound, his palm holding the back of Cheng Shubai’s neck.
“Lie down.”
But Cheng Shubai grabbed his wrist instead. His fingers swiped across the tablet, pulling up a black-and-white surveillance frame. Outside the construction site fence on the stormy night, the man with the scorpion tattoo was pouring liquid into a cable shaft.
“Industrial acetic acid,” Cheng Shubai coughed. “They poured it onto the wutong roots.”
The overhead sterilization lights flickered with a faint buzz. Qi Ye stared at the corner of the image, where part of a license plate was submerged in pooled water.
“The car belongs to Qiaocheng Construction,” he said.
“The Li family is using others as a blade,” Cheng Shubai said, suddenly losing strength and falling back onto the pillow. “The new owner is going to be dragged into trouble.”
A nurse pushed in a medicine cart with a clang. A roll of gauze hit the stainless tray with a sharp slap.
“Hands away.”
Iodine poured over the wound, rising into white foam. Veins stood out on Cheng Shubai’s temple.
“If it hurts, shout,” the nurse said, warm breath brushing his sweat-damp skin.
Cheng Shubai reached back and grabbed Qi Ye’s head. The two of them struggled in the smell of disinfectant until the nurse cut the last stitch.
When the rain finally paused, Zhou Wen rushed into the room holding a stack of documents.
“President Cheng… Engineer Qi, the wutong tree has fallen!”
Aerial photos covered the hospital bed. The century-old wutong tree was snapped in half, its roots submerged in murky acid. The broken trunk looked bone-white at the fracture point. Cheng Shubai’s fingers traced the edge of the photo, where a rusted construction sign lay tilted near the roots, faintly showing the words “Jingwei Design.”
“Framing us?” Qi Ye let out a cold laugh.
Cheng Shubai pulled out his IV needle and got out of bed. Blood dripped down his hand onto the photo. He took the car keys from Qi Ye’s pocket.
“Go to the site.”
“Are you fucking—”
“I won’t die,” Cheng Shubai said, putting on a shirt nearby. “The reporters arrive in half an hour.”
The old shipyard studio was lit up like daylight. Cheng Shubai cleared the clutter off the console, revealing a full wall of surveillance screens. Over a hundred windows simultaneously played footage of the fallen tree, while online comments flooded across the screen like a tide.
#Jingwei Design destroys ancient trees#
#Cheng Shubai get out of the architecture industry#
Qi Ye kicked over a swivel chair. “Trending searches paid for by the Li family?”
“Free publicity,” Cheng Shubai said, pressing Enter.
A locked folder popped up on the main screen. Inside: full footage of the scorpion-tattooed man pouring acid into the cable shaft. The license plate was clearly visible, showing the logo of Qiaocheng Construction.
Zhou Wen’s cursor hovered over the send button.
“Release it now?”
“Wait. Until the tree sap analysis report comes back.”
Before dawn, the darkest hour, the lab fax machine spat out a sheet of paper. Cheng Shubai stood by the window holding the report. In the distance, on the ruins of the site, the remains of the century-old wutong tree looked like a massive corpse under searchlights.
“β-hydroxy acid concentration exceeds the limit by a hundred times,” he read. His voice was cold as iron. “The roots were already completely rotten.”
Qi Ye suddenly snatched the report and ran into the rain.
The cut of the wutong tree oozed pus. The sour, rotting smell had attracted stray dogs. Qi Ye put on gloves and pried apart the decayed roots. Buried in the humus soil were three metal tubes, each engraved with the eagle emblem of the Li Group.
When the phone camera was aimed at the rotting roots, a searchlight suddenly flared on. Chairman Li stepped out of the shadows, Buddhist prayer beads hanging from his wrist.
“Mr Qi, here to mourn the ancient tree?”
“Here to mourn you, actually. Are you mentally stable?” Qi Ye lifted the metal tubes. “Three years of slow-acting poison. Chairman Li, you’ve got patience.”
Camera flashes exploded across the ruins. Cheng Shubai’s voice rang out through a loudspeaker.
“Call the police.”
Sirens grew closer. The chairman’s prayer beads snapped apart, wooden beads scattering into the acid puddles, hissing as they smoked. Cheng Shubai walked up beside Qi Ye under a black umbrella, tilting it to cover them both while the storm of cameras flashed outside the edge of the umbrella.
He placed the metal tubes into an evidence bag, his fingers brushing Qi Ye’s palm.
“The new sapling has arrived.”
A container truck rolled through the mud. A crane lowered a ten-meter-tall wutong tree. Its roots were wrapped in fresh moss, and a tag fluttered in the wind and rain:
“Ancient Tree Triple-Grafting Seedling, Code QY-CS01.”
“What if it can’t survive?” Qi Ye asked.
“Then it rots in the ground.”
The new wutong tree was planted into the pit. The morning sun pierced through the clouds.
After the storm, the old shipyard was filled with the scent of rust and sea salt. Cheng Shubai stood before the surveillance wall, his fingers gliding across the cold screens. Hundreds of windows replayed the moment the wutong tree collapsed. Close-ups of the decayed roots showed the three metal tubes glimmering faintly in the mud.
“Products from Li Heavy Industries, three years ago,” the technical director said, tapping the keyboard. Next to the eagle emblem, production codes popped up. “Slow-release capsules originally used for pest control in ancient trees, but they were altered into a corrosive formula.”
Qi Ye’s wrench slammed onto the console with a clang.
“So the old bastard from the Li family planted someone in the foundation?”
“Three years of dosing, 0.5 milliliters per month,” Cheng Shubai said, pulling up foundation oversight logs. The deleted records glowed red like fresh blood. “Last week’s storm accelerated the spread of the chemicals.”
Zhou Wen rushed into the control room, bringing in a rush of salty sea wind.
“The police cars are already at the Li Group building! Chairman Li’s private jet just applied for a flight route…”
Cheng Shubai closed his laptop. The metal clasp clicked softly.
“Stop it.”
Outside the glass wall, the cranes roared. The ten-meter wutong sapling was slowly lifted by steel cables, its moss-covered roots steaming faintly under the floodlights. Workers were using high-pressure water jets to wash away the acidic contamination, sludge and foam rushing into drainage channels.
“Public opinion team is ready,” Cheng Shubai said, putting on his headset. “Release the full evidence chain in three minutes.”
Qi Ye suddenly grabbed his wrist. The platinum ring pressed between their knuckles, its engraved longitude and latitude lines slightly corroded by acid.
“If the tree can’t live, then you…”
“Tree ring analysis shows decay started three years ago,” Cheng Shubai said, interlacing their fingers in return. Their rings clicked together. “But what was buried under the roots—” He opened his tablet. Deep inside the rotten soil was a rusted safe. “I think it needs to see the light again.”
Sirens tore through the night sky. When the live broadcast camera focused on the excavation site, the corroded safe was already being forced open by hydraulic cutters. A velvet-wrapped file spilled out muddy water. On its cover, the words “Old Textile Factory Redevelopment Plan” were faded and yellowed.
That was their graduation design from seven years ago, the one that had been rejected.
“The plan the Li family bribed judges to eliminate,” Cheng Shubai’s voice spread across the world through satellite broadcast. “The original design included a wutong root protection system.”
Qi Ye picked up the cover page. On the yellowed paper, their younger handwriting circled the wutong tree in red. Beside it was written:
“No plan may harm this tree — Cheng Shubai, Qi Ye”
Rain suddenly poured down again. Cheng Shubai opened a black umbrella over the documents. Water shattered into silver fragments on its surface. He lifted the evidence bag toward the camera. The three metal tubes glowed with faint blue fluid under the forensic light.
“DNA analysis of the ancient tree shows the toxins perfectly match residue from Li’s laboratory samples.”
At the peak of the livestream traffic spike, Zhou Wen’s computer popped up an aviation notice:
“Chairman Li’s aircraft forced to land due to engine failure.”
The old shipyard shutter door slowly rose. Qi Ye nailed their graduation design onto the display wall. The hammer struck concrete, echoing through the space.
Cheng Shubai stood in the rain taking a call. Raindrops formed a bead curtain along the edge of his umbrella, while blue police lights reflected in the water at his feet.
“For the new sapling’s root support structure, use titanium alloy,” Qi Ye said, pressing the design into his arms. “President Cheng, sign the contract?”
Cheng Shubai’s soaked shirt clung to his waist. Phone light lit his lowered lashes.
“Add thirty million to the ecological museum budget,” he said. Then he looked up slightly. “As a betrothal gift?”
The crane arm cut across the night sky. Qi Ye grabbed his left hand. The acid-eroded patterns on the platinum ring were clearly visible under the light. He pulled out a marking pen and carved a new line into the inner ring. Copper shavings fell into the water below. At the center of the intersecting longitude and latitude lines, a small wutong sapling was engraved.
“I’ve taken the interest,” Qi Ye said, slipping the pen into Cheng Shubai’s suit pocket. “We’ll settle the principal after you send that old man to prison.”
Searchlights swept across the shipyard dome. Rusted steel beams glowed red under the light. Cheng Shubai wiped the mud off Qi Ye’s cheek. His fingertips could feel the faint vibration of distant sirens through his skin.
The newly planted wutong sapling stretched its leaves in the rain, its roots quietly taking hold in the wet forest of steel.
I will be posting two chapters every Sunday and Wednesday.
(My translation is far from perfect, so if you see any mistakes please let me know in the comments)
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