Who Stole Bai Yu, the Young Wife?

On the morning of the twentieth day of the twelfth lunar month, just before Spring Festival, time seemed to stand still in Qingfu Village. The voice belonged to Bai Yu's daughter. “Mom... where did you go? Little Brother is hungry!” Niu Laosan was the first to arrive. The front door, usually kept shut, stood wide open. The house was in disarray. Drops of blood trailed across the floor and out of the house. “Don't be scared, kids...” Niu Laosan tried to soothe the terrified siblings, Li Yue and Li Qiang. Niu Laosan remembered that the mahjong game had fallen silent sometime after midnight. Usually, the raucous sound of mahjong from the east end of the village carried on until four in the morning. Whenever Bai Yu and the others played, Niu Laosan would sometimes watch TV at her house while Bai Yu played mahjong with the rest. The clatter of the tiles was the only sound in Bai Yu's impoverished life. At first, it was just a way for the neighbors to pass a leisurely afternoon. Later, the mahjong table became her escape from the tedium of everyday life. Jiang Gui's connections, Wang Wei's investments, Long Qiang's loyalty, and Niu Er's generosity all seemed like light falling upon stagnant water. Bai Yu had no idea that the moment she sat down at the table with her husband's wages in her pocket, a carefully laid trap had begun to close around her. When the veneer of warmth was ripped away, all that remained was naked greed, crushing debt, and shameless coercion. Then, one morning, the commotion at the east end of the village abruptly stopped, and Bai Yu vanished from the world like water vapor. When the police arrived, they found footprints all over the house. Following the trail of blood, they found only the color television, hidden in a sweet potato cellar halfway up the hill behind the village. Where had she gone? Had she become the silent sacrifice of a mahjong scam, or had she turned into an unsolved case in the wilderness, one no one would ever ask about?