"A king's ransom..."
The words rasped from Lao Zhang (老张) —Zhang Jianguo ((张建国) —a fifty-year-old piece of human wreckage who'd spent his prime hauling freight through the jagged mountain passes of the Yunnan-Burma line. He was hunched over the wheel of a white van so caked in road-grime and rust-cancer that it looked like a spent shell held together by nothing but habit and bad luck. The three other grunts in the van turned as one, their pulses starting to red-line as they saw what had hooked Zhang through the gills.
Out on the gray, empty pavement were two children, no more than four or five years on the clock. They were a matched set, identical as twin coins from the same dark mint, though one was a boy and the other a girl. Their skin was as flawless as cream, their cheeks a feverish red, and their lips a deep, glowing pink. They were dressed in red finery so rich it made the eyes ache—a riotous color against the sallow morning light.
The boy wore a thick silk-satin vest, a bright, angry red embroidered with yellow auspicious clouds. The collar and hem were lined with white fur—maybe fox, maybe rabbit—that looked as soft as a summer cloud. Beneath it was a black turtleneck that made the red pop like a fresh wound, paired with heavy black trousers tucked into polished leather boots. A teardrop of jade hung from his neck on a red braided cord—a focal point that drew the eye like a psychic beacon.
The girl was a mirror image in a long hooded cloak of that same bleeding red, trimmed with thick white fox fur. Gold and red threads were woven into the fabric like the tracks of some precious insect. Her inner dress was a traditional ruqun (齊腰襦裙 : Qíyāo Rúqún), layers of crimson and deep pink that swirled around her creamy stockings and embroidered shoes. Red tassels dangled from her ankles, and a peony hairclip sat atop her head like a bright, still butterfly.
As they walked, they didn't just move; they flickered like twin tongues of fire dancing through the morning static. But here was the kicker, the thing that made the hair on the men's necks stand on end: they were alone. They were marching through a void, a stretch of road near the Nanjian early market (南涧早市 : Nánjiàn Zǎoshì) that was as empty as a washed blackboard. The market was just around the corner, teeming with life in the false dawn, but out here on the asphalt, there was only the children, the wind, and a feeling that something in the world had gone fundamentally wrong.
"No grown-ups! Cai Shen Ye—the God of Wealth—is finally smiling on us!" Lao Zhang barked, his pulse starting to red-line behind the wheel. "Ah-Ling, get down there and scoop up the prize before the wind changes! Move!".
Ah-Ling—born Li Feiling (李飞玲)—was a piece of human wreckage, a former kindergarten teacher whose life had gone south after her late husband drowned the family in a whirlpool of black-market debt. Now, she was just another gear in the machinery of a child-snatching ring, a decoy with a back-end developer's attention to the mark.
A matched set of twins—a boy and a girl—was a rare currency in the dark galleries of the black market. They called them "Dragon-Phoenix twins," (龙凤胎 : Lóngfèngtāi) a high-stakes prize for any rich bastid looking to buy a little ancestral luck or scrub away some bad juju. People believed a set like that could pull a family out of the gutter and into a life of prosperity, making them a golden ticket in the underground trade, with a price tag that could make a man's head spin like a weathercock in a high wind.
Even if the black-market butchers didn't bite, the ransom alone would be a king's ransom. Just looking at their threads—the silk and the fur—it was a dead giveaway. The clothing on just one of those kids was worth more than their pissant, rust-caked shell of a van. They were a 'treasure-trove,' pure and simple—meat for the machine that paid top dollar.
The decoy didn't hesitate. Ah-Ling shoved the door open and stepped onto the gray asphalt, clutching a big, wide-eyed doll with golden hair—a hook intended for the gullible small-fry.
The rest of the grunts watched from the van, their eyes like trapped rabbits as they surveyed the scene. The kids were really alone. But trailing behind the boy, tied to a length of rope, was a young goat. It was a plump, well-fed beast, its meat heavy on its bones. Da-Li (大力)—Gao Dali (高大力)—a massive wall of meat with a shaved skull, let out a jagged, booming laugh of pure satisfaction at the sight of the extra haul.
"Lao Zhang, looks like your goat-soup specialty is back on the menu," Da-Li bellowed, his laughter a jagged, booming sound that drifted into the stagnant morning air. "Beyond that matched set of high-priced treasures, we've got a fresh hunk of meat as a side-car bonus. Looks like the God of Wealth is finally smiling on us!" He grabbed the shoulder of Xiao Fei (小飞)—Wang Pengfei (王鹏飞)—a piece of human wreckage who'd traded his future for the cold glow of online gambling apps, and shook him with focused, urgent haste. Xiao Fei performed a frantic little dance of shivering as he was shaken, managed only a dry, rattling chuckle to placate his sub-boss. Yet, a cold lead of certainty settled in his gut; something about those twins and that beast made the hair on his neck stand on end.
"Hello there, kiddos," Ah-Ling chirped, her voice painted on thick with the same nursery-rhyme sweetness used to lure marks into the machine. She offered a smile that was all camouflage. "Where are you two marching off to? Auntie's got a prize for you—see this doll? A big-eyed foreign dolly. You like it, don't you?"
The twins turned as one, their eyes as clear and vacant as a washed blackboard. Up close, they were so God-damned cute it made Ah-Ling's stomach perform its own fantastic rubber acrobatics. For a heartbeat, she wanted to hiss at them to run—to vanish into the morning mist before the machinery of the gang processed them into meat. But the math of survival was a hard scrawl in her head. She stayed rooted, weighing their innocence against the cold, hard cash they represented as high-stakes merchandise.
"We came out to play," the boy said, his voice as thin as a sliver of ice. "We have to go sing," the girl added, her expression lost in some private, faraway static.
"I see. And this fellow? Did he come out to play, too?" Ah-Ling asked, her eyes darting like trapped rabbits as she looked for a watcher in the shadows. The boy reached out with his small, pudgy fingers and stroked the beast's skull. "His name is Bo (猼)," he whispered.
"He's blind!" The girl emphasized, her head tilting at a joint-twishing angle. The boy pointed a short finger toward the goat's spine. "But he's got a big eye on his back!"
Ah-Ling looked, and the world seemed to go sideways into a nightmare. The goat didn't just have closed lids; the skin where the eyes should have been was a smooth, flawless void—as if the machine had never punched the holes. Along the ridge of its back was a heavy, raised lump of a scar, looking like a jagged roadmap of a previous unmaking. It looked exactly like a massive, lidless eye waiting to wink.
"We have to take him," the boy said, his voice dropping into a dry, shivering rattle that froze the marrow in Ah-Ling's bones. "He helps us with the singing".
"Right, right, little ones. Taking the goat for a song, are you? But wouldn't you like to play with this big-eyed dolly? Auntie's got a whole treasury of them in the van—so many toys it'll make your heads spin. Just step this way." Ah-Ling felt the math of survival grinding in her head like the gears of a rusted machine. She'd seen the hard scrawl of fury on Lao Zhang's face, a silent command to move the merchandise or face the knuckles. She felt a cold lead of pity for the twins, but the fear of Zhang's temper was a sliver of ice cutting straight into the meat of her soul.
The children didn't move; they just stood there, offering a grin so wide their eyes turned into tiny, slanted slits. It was a cute look, but it made the hair on the back of Ah-Ling's neck stand up—that instinctive physical recoil the body performs when it encounters something that is fundamentally wrong with the world. She took a shaky step back, her pulse starting to red-line.
"What are your names, kiddos? I'm Ling. You can call me Auntie Ling."
"Big brother is Ying (荧)," the girl said, pointing a small, pudgy finger. "Little sister is Huo (惑)," the boy added, his voice lost in some private, faraway static.
"Ying and Huo. Truly precious," Ah-Ling chirped, her voice painted on with nursery-rhyme sweetness. She saw Da-Li—that massive wall of meat—crack the van door, and a fresh jolt of terror hit her. She was afraid the bald-headed bastid would lose his patience and start the hurting, dealing with the kids with the same savage brutality he used for everything else.
Ah-Ling waved a hushed signal to the crew. Inside the van, Lao Zhang hit the ignition. The engine roared to life with a focused, urgent haste, the white van belching blue smoke as they prepared to process their newest haul into meat for the machine.
In this particular trade, the real kicker was the scream. Usually, the machinery required the knockout stuff—a rag soaked in a chemical curse to send the small-fry into a soupy semi-consciousness. Da-Li was poised for the snatch, and Xiao Fei—that shivering piece of human wreckage—held the rag ready. But the twins? They didn't even flinch. They just marched into the van with those fixed, radiant smiles. And the goat? The blind beast followed them in, and Xiao Fei felt his legs turn to water as he realized the thing was grinning at them, too. It was a sight that defied every instructional manual of logic.
"Close the goddamn door!" Lao Zhang bellowed. Xiao Fei tossed the drugged rag out into the dirt like it was a live snake, then slammed the door—CHUNNK!—a final, metallic sound that sealed the world out. Lao Zhang hit the gas, and the van screamed away, fleeing the scene like a rat in a drainpipe."
Ah-Ling had been braced for the scream—the high-voltage shriek of a child being processed into the machine—but she found herself staring at a void of logic instead. She'd been ready to catch them, to keep their small, fragile frames from hitting the rusted floorboards like discarded rags, but they were as still as a washed blackboard. When she saw those fixed, radiant smiles, her mind performed its own fantastic rubber acrobatics of confusion. Finally, she managed to paint on a voice of nursery-rhyme sweetness.
"Uncle and Auntie are going to take you and Bo for a little ride out of the city, kiddos." She chirped, the lie tasting like spoiled meat in her throat. The twins didn't offer a single word of static. They just sat on the floor—the back seats had been hauled out long ago to make room for more merchandise—and leaned back against the blind goat. It crouched there, a silent cushion of fur in the stagnant air of the van.
The behavior of those kids and their freak of a beast sent a cold lead of certainty into the guts of the three grunts in the back. They just sat there, exchanging baffled, uneasy looks. Even Da-Li, that massive wall of meat who usually bellowed like a bull, kept his trap shut. Ah-Ling was spooked, her words dying in a throat full of dry wool when the kids didn't react. But for Xiao Fei, the math was worse. He felt hot-and-cold jolts performing an agonizing rhythm across his skin. His eyes rolled like trapped rabbits in their sockets, darting from the twins to his own partners, but he dared not look at the goat. He had a cold lead of certainty in his gut that... that blind thing was actually staring right at him!
Up front, Lao Zhang was oblivious to the nightmare settling in behind him. He kept his eyes on the asphalt, steering the machine through the mountain gaps to avoid the city cameras of Dali (大理市 : Dàlǐ Shì)—those goddamn glass eyes that never blink. He was taking the long way around Robin Hood's barn, a 250-kilometer trek through the jagged valleys toward their pissant nest in Eryuan County (洱源县 : Ěryuán Xiàn). It was a three-hour run, but Zhang was a pro; he knew how to move merchandise without being tabbed by John Law.
His heart was a pouting balloon of greed, certain he was hauling a king's ransom in human wreckage. The fifty-year-old leader of this charnel house operation hit the gas with focused, urgent haste, and despite the wind howling through the cracks, he was happy enough to start humming a tuneless song behind the wheel.
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