A caption crept up underneath: ‘A soulless gold digger in the disguise of a public intellectual, who ensnared a rich businessman back from the United States – all for the sake of his money.’

Some of the pictures seemed to be of excellent quality, Chen noted, with her properly posed in good lighting and photographed in high resolution, unlike the product of a hidden camera. The pictures of the moment of ‘cloud and rain’ appeared revealing, but at the same time not too revealing, sensual but not erotic. They could have been taken by Yao with some selfie instruments, and then stolen from his computer.

Combined with the previous sections, however, it would inevitably give rise to the impression of a light or even promiscuous woman, particularly with another caption shooting up: ‘Look at the date on the images. She moved in with him long before their marriage.’

Prenuptial affairs were no big deal in today’s China, especially for those who got married afterward, but given the context, it reinforced the earlier message about her being one of easy virtue, at least in the eyes of the implied viewers.

He pressed stop again.

The video was reaching its end. He did not have to continue watching, though he had not yet seen anything in her own words from the hacked emails, which were probably still being hacked or edited.

It was a no-brainer to figure out that the video was being made to annihilate Shanshan – along with her documentary. It was like an ancient proverb: ‘To stop cooking, it is the most effective to pull all the firewood out of the stove.’

Chen thought he could guess who had ordered the making of the video.

Kang, the head of Zhonghua Petroleum Company, having heard of the documentary in the making, was worried about the interview with Shanshan at the time when the GDP-justifying-everything arrogance had been seen as politically correct, in line with the official propaganda about economic development being the one and only truth at whatever expense. But things were turning out to be quite different now. The environmental expense was too huge, and his argument would have infuriated the mask-wearing viewers. What’s more, the documentary had gathered so much irrefutable evidence about the company riding roughshod over environmental regulations, and causing horrible damage to the people’s health. With the public outcry louder than ever in the air pollution crisis, and with the man behind the ‘petroleum gang’ losing in the power struggle, Kang could be conveniently thrown out as a scapegoat, so he must have been desperate to prevent the release of the documentary.

In The Thirty-Six Stratagems, one of the stratagems was ‘to rescue the State of Zhao by attacking the State of Wei’. In a devious attempt to save his neck, Kang had secretly ordered the making of the tape, by hook or by crook, against Shanshan.

But that was a game two could play.

A knock was heard on the door.

Instead of sending Inspector Chen the text message about Lou’s jogging in the early morning, and about the interview at the neighborhood committee, Detective Yu decided to do one more thing since he was in the neighborhood.