Taking a deep breath, Chen bookmarked it along with several other posts. He might have to reread them more closely, he thought, with the onset of a dull headache, when he heard a light knock on the door.

It was a young delivery man carrying a small basket of Zongzi, speaking to Inspector Chen with a strong Shandong accent. ‘Zongzi for you, sir. Cooked this afternoon, still warm.’

The food delivery too was something new, fashionable in the city – everything possible for delivery to the door.

With more and more people pouring into Shanghai from other provinces, delivery services became a new industry with job opportunities for them. To start up, they just needed a bike or an electronic bike, piling up a variety of delivery goods behind them like acrobats, cutting through the lanes of traffic throughout the city. It was a great convenience to some consumers, who, instead of going out to restaurants, would simply take out their smartphones, click the order on such websites as Are You Hungry or Time to Eat, and their delicacies would come to the door in twenty minutes.

Chen had a mixed feeling, however, about the food delivery service. Perhaps he was just too old-fashioned. For him, delicacies had to be served fresh and hot. With delivery like that, no matter how fast, the taste could not be the same.

Besides, the plastic containers and bags used in the delivery service – particularly with such huge demand – could be a horrible ecological waste.

But it was a different story with the Zongzi from Peiqin. She was just so thoughtful, even though she knew he had mentioned it as an excuse in the phone call.

In addition, there was a printout with a short sentence: ‘Anything else I can do?’ Beneath it, a number of web links. She apparently wanted him to check these.

He gave the delivery man a tip.

After unwrapping a Zongzi into a bowl and picking up the laptop, Inspector Chen stepped out to the balcony despite the bad air. Having skipped lunch, he was hungry.

The stuffing of pork belly and salted egg yolk in the Zongzi tasted surprisingly savory, blending different textures and flavors miraculously, and the soy-sauce-soaked sticky rice proved to be no less satisfying. He could not help beginning to unwrap another Zongzi.

The electronic links turned out to be a different surprise.

None of them showed any content apart from a note saying that ‘the post is in violation of the government regulation, so it is deleted’.

Peiqin must have collected the list in a hurry. Judging by the wording in the links, they could have been about a video posted online, or stories about it.

Then it came to his realization. The links to the sex video concerning Xiang and Geng.

If so, they might still have been viewable at the time Peiqin compiled the list, but shortly afterward they were all deleted by the net cops, who could do anything and everything in the name of fighting ‘violation against the government regulation’.