Most of Qin Si’s attention was still on Ji Shileng, but he glanced up at Director Qing.
“You sound like an atheist, Director Qing”
Buried underground where daylight never reached, the place was eerie enough on its own. Add the piercing screams of all those young women, and the suffering in the laboratory felt thick enough to take shape.
After doing things that went against his conscience for so long, wasn’t he ever afraid?
The sudden turn to whether he believed in gods caught Director Qing off guard. He shook his head.
“I wouldn’t call myself an outright atheist”
“But I’ve been doing this work for a long time. Spend enough years in a hospital and you see all sorts of things. After a while, they stop frightening you”
“True. See enough of something and it stops seeming strange”
Qin Si nodded in agreement.
A-Kuan was perfectly comfortable with the subject. Plenty of the wealthy people he dealt with went in for superstition.
Take the latest one, Coldhearted, standing right in front of him. Didn’t he believe in gods too?
What atheist put stock in birth charts?
“Mr. Qin, let’s be honest. In our line of work, we do things that go against our conscience,” A-Kuan said carelessly. “If we took every superstition seriously, we’d scare ourselves to death sooner or later”
Ji Shileng: “…”
A-Kuan was a comedy act all by himself. The plain truth sounded absurd coming from him.
Ji Shileng couldn’t help smiling with his eyes. Qin Si noticed and asked, “What about you, Mr. Leng? Are you an atheist?”
Ji Shileng nearly blurted out that he didn’t believe in any of it. Then he remembered the requirement he’d given A-Kuan in the office and changed tack.
“I’d like to say I’m a staunch materialist. But there are times when it’s better to respect certain taboos”
That last part was for A-Kuan’s benefit.
With Ji Shileng’s position in life, there were plenty of things he did simply because they made him happy.
Avoid this, steer clear of that. How many taboos did a person really need to live by?
Besides, if something did happen, he stood by what he’d told Guo Weishui: My fate is mine to decide. Heaven has no say in it.
What mattered was what people did, not what fate supposedly had in store.
The first half of Ji Shileng’s answer puzzled A-Kuan. The second cleared everything up.
“No wonder you only had one requirement, Mr. Leng. Other clients come in with demands a mile long”
That piqued Qin Si’s curiosity. He narrowed his eyes slightly.
“Oh? What did Mr. Leng ask for?”
Something about the way Qin Si said “Mr. Leng” sent a shiver down Ji Shileng’s spine.
Did he have to make it sound so intimate?
Of all the things to come to mind then, he remembered Su Ke’s question: So you two keep running into each other every other day. A bond written in the stars?
How had the two of them crossed paths again today, of all days?
He’d thought Qin Si hadn’t recognized him at first.
That, it seemed, had been wishful thinking.
“He only asked that the child’s birth chart not clash with his own”
A-Kuan found it troublesome, but compared with what other clients asked for, it was hardly worth mentioning.
Besides, it was only a birth chart. The fortune-teller would be the one doing the work.
All A-Kuan had to do was pass messages between him and Coldhearted.
“A birth chart,” Qin Si echoed slowly.
By now, A-Kuan had decided Qin Si was easy to talk to as well. He couldn’t help venting a little.
“You have no idea what some of these people are like. Birth charts are just the start. They want a reading for everything, from the day of conception to the exact date the child is born…”
“One client in particular stuck with me”
A-Kuan went on, “He insisted on a child born in the Year of the Dragon, at the stroke of midnight on the first day of the year. Said it was an auspicious time”
Ji Shileng froze. He’d never imagined the surrogacy business could be this deranged.
How could anyone expect every detail to go exactly as they wanted?
Qin Si kept his dark eyes on Ji Shileng, his heart aching faintly. He didn’t know why Ji Shileng was here.
The filth buried beneath Gaopei Laboratory ran too deep.
The cruelty people were capable of was like a swamp that kept dragging you down.
Ji Shileng shouldn’t have come here.
Unaware of what was going through Qin Si’s mind, Ji Shileng curled his fingers slightly.
“Did you do what he asked?”
“Of course we did”
A-Kuan motioned for everyone to head out.
“The client had already paid. You take someone’s money, you do what they ask”
Ji Shileng opened his mouth, then closed it again. He didn’t know how to ask.
“Did you deliver by C-section ahead of term?” Qin Si pressed. “A C-section wouldn’t have been quite as painful”
He knew Ji Shileng wanted the answer.
“The pregnancy hadn’t even reached full term”
A-Kuan’s expression didn’t change in the slightest.
“At the time the client specified, she was only a little over eight months along”
He shrugged.
“What could we do? To meet the client’s demands, we gave her dozens of injections to induce labor and forced an early C-section in the end”
Ji Shileng’s fingertips went cold. A chill rose from the soles of his feet and shot straight to his heart.
Su Ke was sitting cross-legged in the car, eating an afternoon snack. His hand jerked in shock, and his pastry fell and rolled twice across the floor.
“Wouldn’t a dose that large affect the mother?”
Director Qing’s lips curved slightly. His tone remained mild, but what he said was chilling.
“It does. But the moment they bring themselves here, they cease to count as people”
He knew perfectly well that they were human. That was precisely why their screams, however agonized, didn’t frighten him.
They were women too weak to fight back. What could they possibly do to him?
And if they did anything to him, did they still expect to get paid?
But he would never treat those women as people.
If they didn’t see themselves as human, why would anyone else?
“Exactly. Who still counts as a person once they’ve brought themselves here?”
A-Kuan slung an arm around Director Qing’s shoulders in agreement.
“They’re merchandise. Inanimate objects. As long as we meet the client’s demands, it doesn’t matter how we treat them”
Speaking as an investor, Qin Si asked, “In that case, I’d like to know whether the labs in each region have the same net profit margin?”
“No, no, no”
A-Kuan wagged his index finger.
“Customs and local conditions vary. Women in poorer areas are cheaper. In a developed area like ours, they cost more”
“How so?” Qin Si asked, all polite curiosity. “Your boss only gave me the overall figures”
“In poor areas, ten thousand star credits is enough for one egg retrieval from an S- or A-tier woman”
The boss himself had messaged A-Kuan to tell him to look after this man, so A-Kuan held nothing back.
“In a place like ours, you have to pay an S- or A-tier woman at least fifteen thousand star credits”
“So the cost of retrieving the eggs varies,” Qin Si said. “What about the selling prices for everything else? Are those the same?”
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