Black Gold 1983

Inside was a thick stack of papers: drawings, forms, and handwritten records. The paper was yellowed and brittle, with curled edges, as if it had been flipped through many times.

Ren Shouyi pulled out the top sheet and placed it on the table. It was a handwritten form, written in neat, dark blue ink with a fountain pen, a style reminiscent of Ren Shouyi's younger days.

"Inspection record before the sealing of the No. 11 mining area of ​​Hongxing Mine. November 15, 1980."

Renye picked it up and looked at it.

The form lists the patrol time, patrol route, patrol items, any abnormal situations, and the handling results. The last line is the signature of the patrol personnel, with two names: Ren Shouyi and Han Changhe.

He recognized Ren Shouyi's signature. Han Changhe's three characters were written in messy handwriting, but he could still make them out.

Renye looked up at Renshouyi. He swallowed the rest of his words and didn't ask, "Why are you two the ones who went on the inspection?"—The inspection before the well was a task assigned by the mine. Who went with whom wasn't up to them. The labor and personnel department assigned the tasks, and whoever was assigned was the one who did it.

"What were the results of the inspection?" Renye asked.

Ren Shouyi pointed to that column on the form. It read: "Everything is normal."

Renye stared at those four characters for a while.

The underground tunnels, some decades old, were inspected before the mine was sealed, and everything appeared normal. So normal that there wasn't even a single equipment malfunction that needed to be recorded. So normal that not even a sentence like "Some tunnel roofs have cracks; reinforcement is recommended before sealing" was written.

It's too clean. So clean it doesn't seem real.

"Which route did you take when you went down the mine that day?"

Ren Shouyi pulled a drawing out of the box and marked the location of the transport tunnel in the West Second Mining Area. Ren Ye leaned over to look. The drawing was hand-drawn and the scale wasn't very accurate, but the tunnel direction, the location of the working face, and the distribution of the chambers were all clearly marked.

Ren Shouyi paused for a moment at the location of the hidden cave, but did not press down. He just paused for a moment, and then continued to draw deeper along the transport alley.

Renye didn't miss that pause.

"You went into that cave?"

Ren Shouyi did not answer.

"dad."

"They're inside." Ren Shouyi's voice wasn't loud, but it was steady.

Is anyone inside?

Ren Shouyi did not answer immediately. He put a cigarette in his mouth, squinted at the blueprint on the table, as if searching for a road, a road he had traveled many times but had never mentioned to anyone.

"That cave is not on the patrol route."

Renye was taken aback.

"Back then, the inspection route was to enter from the main haulage roadway, walk along the haulage roadway all the way to the coal mining face, turn around, and exit the mine through the return air roadway. The equipment, supports, and ventilation facilities along the way were inspected item by item, and signed off on for confirmation. That rest chamber was on the side wall of the haulage roadway, not on the route, so it was optional to go there."

Renye understood the implication: "You don't have to go, but you did."

Ren Shouyi remained silent.

The only sound in the outer room was the ticking of the old grandfather clock, one tick after another, like someone tapping bones in the dark.

"Han Changhe went down first that day," Ren Shouyi said, his voice hoarse. "He said he wanted to check if the equipment in that chamber was still there and whether it needed to be recycled later. He walked in front, and I followed behind. I approved the support structure for that chamber; I knew the specifications of the timber, the spacing between the canopies, and the thickness of the backboard. I could tell how stable it was as soon as I went in."

Ren Shouyi paused for a moment, his fingers unconsciously tapping on the table.

"Before entering the chamber, Han Changhe suddenly turned and glanced at me. I had never seen that look on his face before. It wasn't fear, it wasn't nervousness, it was a kind of... pause before making a decision."

"What did he see?"

"It wasn't him who saw anything," Ren Shouyi's voice deepened. "It was me."

He took the cigarette from his lips, stubbed it out in the enamel mug, and looked up at Renye. The dim light etched deep wrinkles into his face, like the tunnels underground, worn smooth by countless mine carts.

"There's a light in the chamber. Not a miner's lamp, but a lantern. It's on."

Renye's heart sank.

Before sealing the well, all electrical equipment must be powered off, and all open flames must be taken out of the well. A lit kerosene lamp indicates that someone was in that chamber before they arrived. Or—still there.

"You went in and looked?"

Ren Shouyi nodded.

"What's inside?"

Ren Shouyi turned the patrol record over; the back of the paper was blank. He stared at that blank space for a long time.

"That transport tunnel was used when coal trucks had to pass each other. One side was loaded and the other was empty and the other was empty. In other places, the tunnel width was only enough for one coal truck to turn around, but in that location, it was almost twice as wide. When I went to the electromechanical department to collect the support timber, Han Changhe had already drawn up the blueprints and asked for much more than usual. I said that the extra tunnel was useless to the coal miners, but he said it was to leave room for the transport team to pass each other. We were the second coal mining team at that time, and he had a good relationship with the people in the transport team, so the matter was easily resolved."

Ren Shouyi took out a cigarette and lit it.

"Looking back now, he wasn't trying to leave a place for the transport team to pass; he just wanted to raid that chamber. The timber was collected and reported to the transport team's account, the report was submitted by the transport team, and the higher-ups signed off on it; the transport team handled it all themselves. There wasn't a single line of investigation that could be traced back to him."

Ren Shouyi closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again.

"The woman was leaning against the innermost rock wall of the chamber, half sitting and half lying down."

Jinno held his breath.

"She was still wearing her mine work clothes." Ren Shouyi's voice trembled. "Men's style, a size too big, the collar was held in place with wire, and the cuffs were rolled up three times. Her hair was tied back with an old hairdryer strip, and her face was turned inward, so you couldn't see her face."

"Is she alive?"

Ren Shouyi did not answer this question.

He flicked his cigarette ash, and the grayish-white ash fell onto the table like a fine layer of salt frost.

"I told Han Changhe that this matter should be reported."

"When I was halfway there, Han Changhe said, 'You report it, do you think you can find out the truth? How many things in the mine over the years have been thoroughly investigated?'"

"He said the woman was wearing mine work clothes, inside and out. There were name tags on the inside lining of the jacket pockets. That garment belonged to him."

Ren Ye's heart sank suddenly. He instantly understood the meaning of Han Changhe's words and why Ren Shouyi had remained silent for three years.

The clothes belong to Han Changhe. No matter who that woman is, no matter how she got in, as long as she's wearing those clothes, and as long as there's a name tag on them, Han Changhe will never be able to clear his name, even if he jumps into the Yellow River.

"He said the clothes were indeed his. He lost them last year while eating in the cafeteria, and someone took them while they were hanging on the back of his chair. Do you believe him if he says that?"

Ren Shouyi's voice was very low, so low that it sounded like he was talking to himself.

"I told him to go to the personnel department and the security department and report the missing clothes beforehand. He said, 'You think I didn't report it? I did report it, I verbally mentioned it to the security department, but they didn't register it. Now that something's happened, you're trying to bring up old grievances, who's going to take responsibility?'"

The main room was as quiet as a well.

"He said something else that I remembered for three years. He said, 'If you report me, I'll definitely go in too. Then you can think about who will take care of that fully mechanized mining equipment.'"

Ren Shouyi stubbed out his cigarette.

"That equipment was something the mine had been waiting for for two years, and countless people throughout the mine were watching it closely. The fully mechanized mining team was just waiting for him to oversee it; without him, the equipment was just a pile of scrap metal. The mine manager talked to him, telling him to get the fully mechanized mining up and running no matter what. Did he want the mine manager's signature?"

Renye wanted to smoke a cigarette, but when his finger touched the cigarette pack, he pulled it back.

"So you didn't report it."

Ren Shouyi neither nodded nor shook his head. He simply turned the patrol record over so that the blank back faced Ren Ye.

The blank space is the answer.

The patrol log for that day read "everything is normal." There was a lit kerosene lamp in the cave on the side wall of that transport alley, and a woman wearing Han Changhe's work clothes. None of this appeared on that piece of paper.

Ren Shouyi carefully placed the stack of papers back into the tin box, one by one. His movements were slow, like a funeral procession. When the tin box was closed, the dull thud sounded like a shovel of earth.

"What do you plan to do?" Ren Shouyi asked.

Renye lit the cigarette and took a drag. Smoke billowed from his nostrils, dispersing in the dim light.

"First, we need to find out who she is," Renye said. "Why would Han Changhe detain someone? This person must be directly related to him. If she doesn't have something on him, then she knows some secret."

Ren Shouyi looked at Ren Ye with a complicated expression.

Did you guess it?

Renye held the cigarette between his fingers and did not deny it.

Renye knew Han Changhe all too well. He was greedy, lecherous, and audacious, capable of anything from swindling to cheating and deception. But it was precisely because he knew him so well that Renye felt there was something strangely unsettling about the whole affair.

The female corpse was wearing Han Changhe's work uniform, and the label had been deliberately left on. This didn't seem like a cover-up; rather, it seemed like it was intentionally left there in case of emergency.

Those who truly want to hide a body will strip off their clothes, burn everything that could identify them, and then stuff the body into a corner where no one can find it. They wouldn't dress the body in their own work clothes and then dump it in a privately dug chamber where they might be discovered at any moment.

Unless—the clothes were originally hers. She was wearing those clothes when she entered that cave. Later, the clothes were identified as Han Changhe's. This means that Han Changhe knew this woman.

"Dad, did you see the name tag on that work uniform clearly?"

Ren Shouyi was taken aback: "It's very clear, it's the three characters Han Changhe."

"In other words, the clothes belonged to Han Changhe before the incident. Either Han Changhe gave the clothes to her, or she took Han Changhe's clothes herself. It's wrong for a woman to wear a man's work uniform instead of her own."

Ren Shouyi nodded.

"According to you, when you went on patrol with Han Changhe that day and discovered the female corpse, Han Changhe's first reaction was not surprise or fear, but to negotiate with you at the cave entrance."

"Yes." Ren Shouyi's voice lowered.

"When a normal person discovers a corpse, their first reaction is to be startled. But his first reaction was to cover it up. This shows that he already knew there was something in that chamber, and even knew there was a corpse there."

Renye finished the cigarette and stubbed it out on the sole of his shoe.

"Who exactly is that woman? You've been partners with Han Changhe for so many years, and you've never heard of him getting close to any woman?"

Ren Shouyi shook his head: "He never mentions these things to my face. But there have always been rumors in the mine that he has some kind of ambiguous relationship with a woman in the propaganda department."

Renye's heart skipped a beat, as if something had emerged from the shadows, but he couldn't quite grasp it.

No, that doesn't make sense. The woman in the propaganda department is a regular employee of the mine, with a proper job and a stable income. If a woman were to hook up with the head of the electromechanical department, she'd only be after money, a future, and a powerful backer. She could easily find many more respectable and safer ways to live; there's no need for her to accompany Han Changhe into a tunnel dozens of meters underground.

Unless—this woman isn't from the Red Star Mine. She can't enter the mining area, can't be in the light of day, and can't meet Han Changhe in a normal place. So every time they meet secretly, they can only hide in this secluded underground chamber.

It wasn't that Han Changhe locked the person up there; it was that he had been meeting with that woman like this ever since she was alive.

That woman wasn't locked in the chamber; she went down there on her own to see Han Changhe.

"If she wanted to go down there herself, why didn't she come out when the West Second Well was sealed?"

Unless—Han Changhe hadn't told her about the sudden closure of the wells in the West Second Mining Area. Or perhaps, he hadn't had a chance to tell her yet.

Renye picked up the cigarette butt from the sole of his shoe and threw it into the dustpan next to the table leg. Various thoughts swirled in his mind as he walked to the door and stopped.

"Dad, don't mention the woman's body to anyone for now."

"And you?"

"I'm going to find Uncle Han."

When Renye came out of his house, it was already broad daylight.

The loudspeaker in the mining area was broadcasting a production schedule, but the female announcer's voice wasn't Tian Sui'er's; it was someone else. Ren Ye stood at the intersection for a while, listening to the unfamiliar voice read out the day's production tasks one by one, before turning and walking towards the electromechanical department.

It takes more than ten minutes to walk from the family compound to the electromechanical department's warehouse. He walked slowly, his mind constantly racing.

He needs time to process what Ren Shouyi said.

Han Changhe and that woman met in the underground mine chamber not just once or twice, but regularly. The woman was wearing Han Changhe's work clothes—either given to her by Han Changhe, or taken from him herself. Either way, their relationship was anything but ordinary.

The news of the sudden closure of the West No. 2 mining area was announced by the mine in less than a week, from decision to execution. As the head of the electromechanical department, Han Changhe would not have known the news for more than two days in advance.

Did he notify the woman during those two days? If he did, why didn't she come out? If he didn't, did he forget, or did he do it on purpose?

Only Han Changhe himself knows the answers to these questions.

The door to the electromechanical department's warehouse was open, and a Jiefang brand truck was parked in front of it. Several workers were loading things onto the truck. Renye walked around the back of the truck and went straight inside.