A separate entity

After hearing the updates, Jia and Minghsen rushed back to the bureau to meet up Huojin and get more information about the situation.

Huojin and his team had thoroughly searched the area thrice, even then they failed to find Danya. All they found there was an abandoned van.

"Damn! Did they take Danya to somewhere else while Huojin was on his way?" Jia was mumbling to herself as she tried to find the answers in her head.

"Were we late?"

She was internally mapping different locations around the area in her mind to think of the possible places they could have taken Danya next.

Mingshen curiously observed her. "Why are you still exerting your brain cells?"

Jia squinted her eyes. "What do you mean still? The case isn't resolved yet."

"Which is not your responsibility anymore. You heard it right? It's Huayuan's territory. The police cannot do anything about it."

"I didn't understand what Miss. Wenqian said and I cannot buy it. What does she mean by autonomy? Everything falls under the People's Republic of China. The law and order isn't different for anybody."

Mingshen chuckled. "Are you ignoring the Underworld, my dear?"

Her brow twitched.

"That's a dark place where you or your force cannot touch us. Remember how the Underworld and the police force came to an agreement of mutual cooperation and benefit?"

The Underworld and Beijing's police force were always at odds with each other ever since the beginning as they stood on opposite sides of the law.

One represented fair means of giving justice while the other only swam in the sea of darkness and illegality.

But it all changed under Zhao Weizhe's regin. He was the former ruler and the father of the current Mafia king.

He made it possible for the Underworld and the police force to work with each other rather than at each other's throats. They mutually agreed on the terms and conditions of where they would cooperate with each other and where they would back off.

Jia replied. "The Underworld is an exception."

"But not the only one," Mingshen leisurely said. "Count Huayuan too."

"I know of such regions who have some degree of autonomy like Tibet, Ningxia, Xinjiang but when was Huayuan added to the list? You seem to know the details."

He laughed. "Of course I do. Wei does too. It caused quite a stir a few years back. The one and only tyrannical ruler of Huayuan, Long Sicong, had died. He was the one who secretly ran the red-light district for a good number of years."

"Prostitution is illegal in China."

"Which makes you wonder how Huayuan survived this long, don't you think?" He gave her a meaningful smile.

Jia clutched the steering wheel as her jaw gnashed with disgust.

"Because some bad apples slept with the sex workers."

"Ding Ding! Right answer~ They got pleasure in exchange of not cracking down the place and dumping them all to jail."

Jia felt this strong urge to strangle somebody.

Is this why Miss. Wenqian so hostile to cops?

She stopped her cop car at a red signal and asked, "What about the underworld then? The Zhao family doesn't allow illegal prostitution either. Uncle Weizhe and Wei must have taken some action to stop prostitution."

Mingshen cocked his brow and tilted his head. "The definition of illegal in your dictionary and the underworld's dictionary is not the same, my dear. For your justice system, prostitution is something that isn't allowed to exist at all. It cannot be taken up as a means to earn money like other jobs.

However for us, it's not that prostitution cannot exist. For us, illegal prostitution means sex without consent. During the older rule of the underworld by Jiang Zemin, sex workers were treated like trash. They were forced to sleep with people they didn't want to. That's why when the Zhao family took over, they wanted to put an end to that."

He smiled. "You know Huayuan means a garden?"

"Yeah," Jia replied.

"Sadly, the very flowers giving life to that garden were always trampled upon."

The history between Jiang Zemin and the underworld spanned three generations back as he ruled it like a tyrannical and evil king who disrespected and abused his then wife, Jiang Xiuying. But it was Zhao Wei's grandfather, Zhao Weisheng, who built the Zhao empire from scratch and changed the course of the underworld for the better.

Jiang Xiuying, who suffered under her husband's torture found her love in Zhao Weisheng who was Jiang family's butler then. The fruit of that love came in the form of their children who took the underworld's throne from the Jiang family. But they were treated like Jiangs as they had kept their affair and their children's true lineage a secret.

It was after a long and painful separation of many years that the last corrupt descendent of the Jiang family, Jiang Zhen, was defeated by the Mafia King, Zhao Wei. The Jiang family name was erased forever, making everything officially and rightfully belonging to Zhao.

Mingshen smiled. "Uncle Weizhe cracked down on many such small establishments and kept Long Sicong in check too until six years ago when he mysteriously died."

The red signal turned green and Jia resumed driving.

"Mysteriously?"

"The underworld knows that he died in an accident, but the truth inside Huayuan is different. We just knew it in our guts. Uncle Weizhe and Wei, who had just taken over as the Mafia King, tried to find out what had exactly happened to Long Sicong, but each and everyone of them had shut their lips tightly. Nobody spoke a word. They all became united to protect the truth. Honestly, it fascinated me because whoever united so many mouths to remain silent was extremely talented. Perhaps cunning too," his eyes twinkled.

"What happened then?"

He lazily stretched his arms. "We still don't know who exactly controls the red-light district. But after Long Sicong died, Wei received a message from one of the people working in Huayuan. Like a messenger. It stated that from now on, the underworld will never interfere in and control Huayuan's matters. It would have autonomy from us, and it had already received the same from law enforcement."

Jia squinted her eyes.

"Uncle Weizhe and Wei agreed only upon the condition that the consent and freedom of sex workers to have sex when and with whom they want would never be violated in any event. If they did, the Mafia King would take over irrespective of the autonomy.

So in effect, Huayuan became a separate entity just like how law and the underworld is now."