Love on the Turquoise Land

The so-called farm was actually a village nestled against the mountains. The soil in that area wasn't suitable for growing crops but was ideal for cultivating medicinal herbs. Some shrewd villagers began switching to herb cultivation, earning substantial profits within a year. Neighbors soon followed suit, each planting three to five acres, and over time, the village became well-known for its medicinal herbs. Many herb dealers and wholesalers would come regularly to purchase the produce.

Yan Huanshan was among the first to recognize the business potential. He found the small-scale, household-based operations inefficient and envisioned consolidating the village's resources—turning scattered, self-sufficient villagers into his employees by establishing a Chinese medicinal herb company. This venture would involve both external procurement and maintaining its own cultivation base.

Though the idea was sound, implementation proved arduous. Yan Huanshan's existing business already demanded significant time and effort, and the new project required layers of paperwork, countless permits, and villagers' consent. By the time he passed away, the company had yet to break ground.

It was Lin Xirou who later pushed the project forward. By the time Lin Ling was in high school, the base had officially begun operations, and Lin Xirou was rarely home, dedicating most of her time to the facility.

During the summer vacation of her second year of high school, Lin Ling visited the farm to escape the heat. Yan Tuo was also there at the time, fulfilling his graduation requirement for "social practice" credits.

The base had a three-story building with extensive space for storage and preliminary herb processing—washing, slicing, drying, and so on. On her first day, Lin Ling decided to climb up and down the stairs twenty times daily to lose weight.

From the start of her stair-running routine, she noticed the building had more than three floors: there was space underground. However, the stairway leading down was locked behind an iron gate, said to house discarded machinery and substandard herbs slated for year-end destruction.

This conjured images of a dim basement, cobwebbed old equipment, and scurrying rats. Lin Ling had no interest in what lay beyond the gate.

One day, as she reached the ground floor, she found the iron gate slightly ajar, with faint traces of Lin Xirou's voice coming from within.

Lin Ling was pleasantly surprised—she hadn't seen Lin Xirou in a while. She adored "Aunt Lin," the only person in the world who treated her with such gentleness and care.

Excited, she trotted over and stepped through the gate. Inside was a different world—dark, silent, and cluttered, with abandoned furniture and machinery piled everywhere. Dust motes floated in the sliver of light from the doorway.

Lin Ling began to doubt she'd heard correctly. Why would Lin Xirou be here? She was a high-ranking executive; even for inspections, she wouldn't come to such a dismal place.

Disheartened, she turned to leave when, from deep within, a man's bloodcurdling scream pierced the silence.

The sound came abruptly and lasted only a second or two, but it was horrifying. Lin Ling's hair stood on end, but she was too timid to even raise her voice. "Who's there?" she whispered.

No one answered. After a pause, faint, weeping-like sounds drifted out, too indistinct to decipher. Hesitating, Lin Ling tiptoed toward the source.

In hindsight, it was fortunate surveillance cameras weren't commonplace back then—otherwise, she would have been caught much sooner.At the end of the basement level hung a thick plastic curtain—the kind often used in large shopping malls during winter for soundproofing, insulation, and wind protection. Beyond the curtain, there was light—artificial light.

Lin Ling swallowed hard and pushed through the curtain.

To her surprise, there was another staircase leading further down. This building had more than one underground level.

Tiptoeing down a few steps, the sounds gradually became clearer.

It was a man sobbing and pleading weakly, as if his earlier scream had drained all his strength. Lin Ling heard him say, "Please, let me go. Take all my money. I have a daughter—An An is only in ninth grade. If I die, she’ll be left all alone, an orphan. What will happen to her then?"

His words dissolved into desperate weeping.

Lin Ling trembled in terror, convinced she had stumbled upon a crime scene—a robbery and murder in progress.

Then, suddenly, she heard Lin Xirou’s voice, gentle and kind: "Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of your daughter."

Aunt Lin? Lin Ling’s mind went blank. How could it be Aunt Lin? How could Aunt Lin be involved in robbery and murder? She was so wealthy!

The man’s agonized scream pierced the air again, accompanied by the sickening thuds of a blunt weapon striking flesh and bone. Even without seeing it, Lin Ling could vividly imagine the horrific scene. She collapsed onto the stairs, hugging her knees and shaking uncontrollably. Amid the chaos, she caught a few more snippets of conversation.

One was from Lin Xirou: "Be careful. Don’t kill him. Leave him barely alive."

Another was from Xiong Hei: "Got it. I know my limits."

Xiong Hei had appeared by Lin Xirou’s side a few months ago—a towering, bear-like man with fists the size of a child’s head. His real name was Sun Xiong, but his hulking frame and dark complexion earned him the nickname "Xiong Hei" (Black Bear). Lin Xirou had introduced him as a bodyguard hired from out of town—after all, in the business world, revenge was always a risk, and it wasn’t unusual for bosses to employ a few bodyguards.

The last two lines came from the man being beaten.

First: "My bones... my bones are broken... I’ve done nothing to you... God... God... An An... An An..."

Second: "You’ll die horribly... die horribly..."

The man’s weak, fading curses grew distant. Lin Ling took a long moment to steady herself before shakily descending a few more steps.

The space below was empty now, save for a pool of blood and a thick, fading trail of smeared blood leading away. Clearly, Xiong Hei had dragged the man off, and Lin Xirou had followed.

Lin Ling stood frozen before the bloodstain, desperately rationalizing: He must have been a bad person who hurt Aunt Lin, so she took brutal revenge—private justice is illegal, but adult matters are complicated. Maybe... maybe Aunt Lin had no choice.

Her mind screamed at her to turn around, climb back up, walk out the metal door, and pretend she’d seen nothing. But her legs refused to obey. Trembling, she stepped onto the level ground and kept going—she needed to know where the man had been taken. When Aunt Lin said to "leave him barely alive," did she mean to keep him alive for prolonged torture, like in those TV dramas?

Or perhaps, deep down, Lin Ling simply couldn’t believe Aunt Lin was capable of something so horrifying. She had to see it with her own eyes—only then would she accept the truth.The second basement level covered a considerable area, divided into different sections—storage rooms and cultivation chambers—though many were still under construction. The corridors branched frequently, and Lin Ling, unsure which way to turn, wandered aimlessly until she reached a dead end: a cultivation chamber.

She tried the door handle and, surprisingly, it turned.

Unable to locate the light switch, she peered inside using the dim glow from the hallway.

The first thing that struck her was the smell of soil. The center of the room was left unpaved, exposing the raw underground earth, divided into three plots, each roughly the size of a single bed. Over them arched miniature plastic canopies, resembling tiny versions of greenhouse tunnels.

The three mini-tunnels weren’t placed side by side; instead, they were spaced about half a meter apart, connected by brick-paved walkways.

How strange. What precious medicinal herb needed to be grown underground, shielded by plastic? Though Lin Ling knew little about traditional medicine, she was aware that "all life depends on the sun." She had never heard of anything being cultivated this deep underground.

She crouched beside the nearest canopy and lifted the plastic sheet to peek inside.

Empty. It seemed the seeds hadn’t sprouted yet.

She checked the second one.

Still empty.

Actually, the second wasn’t entirely empty. Had she looked closer, she might have noticed a faint undulation beneath the soil, like a massive earthworm burrowing underneath.

Then she lifted the last one.

The moment she did, her entire body jolted—not so much from fear as from sheer shock. Inside lay a naked middle-aged woman.

The woman lay flat on her back, arms splayed at her sides, her face deathly pale and strikingly ugly—protruding brow ridge, broad nose, and a stubby chin, almost like a primitive hominid. She was clearly alive, her chest rising and falling with breath. But because the soil was loose, much of her body had sunk into the ground, making her look like a breathing bas-relief.

Why was she sleeping here? And naked, no less? Lin Ling felt a flush of embarrassment, but the curiosity of a teenage girl compelled her to steal a glance at the woman’s private areas.

Was she a factory worker sneaking a nap here? But who would sleep like this? Some kind of pervert?

Fear crept back in, and a voice in her head urged, Enough. Just leave.

She scrambled to her feet—only to realize her legs had gone numb from crouching too long. Rising too quickly, she lost her balance and tumbled into the plastic canopy. In her panic, her hand landed on something cold and soft—the woman’s leg.

The disturbance roused the woman. A guttural "Hah..." escaped her throat, though her eyes remained shut. Her upper body lifted from the ground at a sharp 40-degree angle.

Under the hallway light, Lin Ling saw it clearly: the woman’s back—no, not just her back, but all the way down to her waist—was covered in dense, reddish-brown strands of mucus and blood, stretching from the soil like thousands of sticky threads.

The other ends of those threads disappeared into the earth. And as the woman sat up, an indescribable stench of rot flooded the air.

Lin Ling’s mind went blank, frozen in terror. A second later, she opened her mouth to scream—

A hand clamped over her lips from behind, yanking her into a corner. She collided with a firm chest, and a low voice whispered in her ear, "Don’t scream. Someone’s coming."

Yan Tuo?

What was Yan Tuo doing here?Lin Ling clutched his arm in a daze, listening to the pounding of his heartbeat. She looked up at his face—Yan Tuo hadn’t yet graduated from university at the time, still carrying traces of youthful innocence but already beginning to take on the bearing of a man. His expression was grave, and he nervously licked his lips.

Someone was indeed coming. As the footsteps drew nearer, the lights in the hallway flickered off one by one. Xiong Hei’s voice rang out: “I’ve turned off all the lights and closed the doors.”

As he spoke, his head poked into the room.

Lin Ling held her breath, frozen with tension. Fortunately, Xiong Hei only glanced at the plastic tents and didn’t pay any attention to the dark corners. He soon shut the door behind him.

Darkness enveloped everything, inside and out. The footsteps faded away, leaving the room as silent as an underground tomb.

It had been a long time since Lin Ling had spoken to Yan Tuo. Yet, this sudden encounter and the shared secret between them now made him feel closer to her. Trembling, she whispered to him, “What is this?”

In the darkness, she heard Yan Tuo’s reply.

“I don’t know either.”

……

That incident at the farm marked the first step in their later collaboration.

—If it hadn’t been for that time… if the iron door beneath the farm hadn’t been left unlocked, if I hadn’t been curious enough to walk in… would my life be easier now?

Yan Tuo said, “There are no ‘what ifs.’ It was fate that led you to discover it. Get some rest.”

Lin Ling didn’t move. “Yan Tuo, why do you think Aunt Lin adopted me?”

Yan Tuo stayed silent. In recent years, Lin Ling had asked him this question more than once.

To be honest, he truly didn’t see why Lin Xirou needed to adopt Lin Ling. If she wanted a child, she could have easily found one in the city—adorable, pretty, whatever suited her fancy. After getting to know Lin Ling, he had heard fragments of her memories about her hometown. What was the point of going out of her way to bring back such an ordinary girl from some remote backwater?

There had to be a reason.

He didn’t share these thoughts with Lin Ling, just as he hadn’t told her about his visit to Nie Jiuluo this time. Though they were collaborators and should have been open with each other, he chose to keep certain things from her—partly due to his innate sense of unease, and partly because he felt Lin Ling was a bit too soft.

Living beside a woman like Lin Xirou, one couldn’t afford to be a meek little lamb.

Besides, he had the same question as Lin Ling.

Why did Aunt Lin keep him around?

After she had directly or indirectly caused his sister’s disappearance, his mother’s paralysis, and his father’s death—why did she still keep him, raise him, even treat him well?