★ Author Lai Ji is a law postdoc and a graduate of a criminal investigation school, and also a working screenwriter: he wrote the crime feature film "Money Bastion" (金钱堡垒) and did story and literary planning on the web series "Candle in the Tomb: Kunlun Shrine" (昆仑神宫) and "Fearless Blood" (欢颜).
★ In 2017, soon after publication, the novel's TV-series and mobile-game adaptation rights were sold. It went out with a joint endorsement from mystery writer Ning Hangyi, wuxia writer Fang Baiyu, and director Feng Haitao.
★ A teenage boy helps his friend chase a music dream in Beijing, all to find out whether that friend really killed their teacher. What he finally sees clearly is not his friend at all. It is himself.

Zhao Xiaodao has always been in love with his English teacher, Miss Lu. Then she is found murdered — and Zhao vanishes.

His classmate Zhou Zidan wants only one thing: to know whether Zhao had anything to do with her death. He has no evidence, no clues, nothing but his own judgment. So he does the only thing he can. He gets close to Zhao, follows him to Beijing to chase a music dream, and watches him, day after day.

Life as two drifters in the capital is no romance. The boys play bars and rehearse in rundown studios, and slide step by step into a world of gangs and drugs. Reality grinds their dreams down, until the only way out is with their fists — and their youth ends the hard way.

The closer Zhou Zidan gets, the more certain he is that Zhao is hiding something about the murder. What he never suspects is that Zhao has been protecting a deeper secret of his own. So who is the one with the problem? And who really killed Miss Lu?

Lai Ji (b. 1986, Yibin, Sichuan) is a novelist, screenwriter, and postdoctoral law scholar. He is a graduate mentor at the School of Criminal Investigation, Southwest University of Political Science and Law, a member of the Sichuan Writers Association, and a contracted author of the Ba Jin Literature Academy.
He has spent years studying criminal psychology and law, has taken part in major case investigations as a criminal-profiling consultant, and has published academic papers including "Criminal Profiling: Reinterpreting the Principles, Tag Cards, and the Prospects of Big Data" in the Journal of Sichuan Police College.
He is the author of numerous novels, several of which have been adapted for screen. His novel "Su Di: Shan He Wu Ming" became the TV drama "Su Di" (starring Liao Fan and Zhu Zhu; aired on CCTV-8 and Tencent Video in 2024), and "Guo An Ju Mi Dang" became the series "Secret Files of XSA" (Tencent Video, 2025).
Beyond his own writing, he works in film and television, with credits as screenwriter of the feature film "Money Bastion" and as story planner on "Candle in the Tomb: Kunlun Shrine" and "Fearless Blood."
His work has received the Dianchi Literature Award and the Baihua Literature Award.
"The Secret of My Best Friend" is his 2017 coming-of-age mystery novel.

(1) His Name Is Zhao
(2) The Murder of Teacher Lu
(3) Dreams
(4) Shadowing the Suspect
(5) Ada
(6) The Blue Lotus
(7) The Music Shed
(8) The Subway to Spring
(9) Three Love Poems and a Night Flight
(10) Showdown
(11) Cause of Death
(12) The Turn
(13) Bow and Arrow
(14) Rival in Love
(15) Xia Shunhan
(16) A Shout
(17) Changing Schools
(18) Born to Sing
(19) Street Boys
(20) Encounter
(21) Pillow Talk
(22) A Fight
(23) Kung Fu
(24) Chorus
(25) Strangers on the Literary Road
(26) Chen Dabao
(27) Summer
(28) A Fierce Fight
(29) Meteors and Stories
(30) Damn It! Ideals
(31) Beijing, Beijing
(32) Golden Years, Luo Daliang
(33) The Cultural Circle
(34) A Young Woman
(35) Drugs
(36) The Axe Gang
(37) In the Mood for Love
(38) Just Talk
(39) Cinderella
(40) A Real Man
(41) The Oriental Pearl
(42) Professional Skill
(43) Reunion
(44) Trapped
(45) If the Clouds Knew
(46) Sister Eleven
(47) Rejected
(48) Night Out
(49) The Watershed
(50) Heroin
(51) Brother Star
(52) The Underworld
(53) Imprisoned
(54) Cellmate
(55) A Life Claimed, and Revenge
(56) Night Battle
(57) Five Years Later
(58) Life Can't Go On Like This
(59) Starting Over
(60) A Tree on Nanshan, Chongqing
(61) April Days
(62) Back to the Start
(63) Last Words
(64) The End

【EXCERPT】（章节节选 · 英译样章）

Note: opening chapters, translated as a sample for rights submissions. The narration is first-person, in the voice of Zhou Zidan. Contains strong language.

--- Chapter 1. His Name Is Zhao ---

When Zhao Xiaodao finished his second number, I grabbed the fourth glass of red wine off the table and downed it in one go, to steady my nerves. Looking down from the stage, the young crowd was on the boil; they said plenty of them were popping pills.

Not cold medicine or antiviral granules, of course — Baidu can tell you exactly what "popping pills" means. The lights, heavy with the smell of wine and sweat, flashed and dazzled, and for a moment I felt dizzy.

Xiaodao hurried over. "Quick, try it — you're up!" I walked out and cradled the microphone the way I'd hold a glass of red wine. Behind me the drummer tossed his dripping-wet hair; below, the various heads bobbed and bobbed, and two screams cut through, the mood like a volcano going off.

The bass and drums rumbled through the intro, then paused. I took a deep breath — and the lyric I'd lifted to my lips caught in my throat. I was too out of place in a place like this, and I simply couldn't sing! Seeing something was wrong, Xiaodao cleverly shot the drummer a look, then glared at me hard. He was probably cursing me under his breath: Zhou Zidan, don't you dare screw up my rice bowl.

The drummer got the message and rattled through the intro again. Still I couldn't sing. A wave of boos rose from below. Xiaodao shouted, "Damn it, just sing! What the hell are you doing?" That yell did it — worst of all, it scared the lyrics right out of my head.

So I sang without them. What I sang I couldn't hear myself; I just hummed, vague and muffled, and I'm sure nobody could make out that my lyrics were basically a string of curses at Xiaodao's mother.

The audience was decent that night and didn't throw eggs. We figured later it was because they were used to polished, classically trained voices and wanted a change of flavor. Two years later, Jay Chou turned up in Taiwan, China, reworking the style I'd had back then, and became a sensation on both sides of the strait. The first time I heard him I was washing dishes; I couldn't make out the words and thought he, too, was cursing Xiaodao's mother.

That was my first time singing in a bar. I regret not riding that flash of inspiration and making something of it — I let my chance to become Jay Chou slip by.

Xiaodao and Ada, our drummer, would sigh and wonder: how come when someone else sings like that they get famous, and when you do it you don't? That's fate, I guess.

Speaking of fate, Xiaodao once quoted some authority at me: "A great philosopher once said, life is like a glass of red wine." What nonsense. Where do you find such a simple life? Life is red wine, baijiu, and beer all mixed together — "Quanjude"! Zhao Xiaodao, you've still got that murder from sixteen years ago hanging over you. Quit talking to me about life.

--- Chapter 2. The Murder of Teacher Lu ---

Sixteen years ago, Yang Guo still hadn't found his Little Dragon Maiden.

Sixteen years ago — that is, in 2000 — what we got instead was a young and lovely English teacher. Fine-featured, slender, she was what today's internet slang would call a goddess.

The goddess's surname was Lu. The Lu of Lu Xiaoman. She had just graduated from the foreign languages department of a teachers college in the provincial capital.

But her given name I can't remember. All I remember is her in the empty corridor of the teaching building on a summer afternoon, in a tight white shirt with lace faintly showing, a black pencil skirt wrapping her with a knowing air, an English dictionary always in her arms. Wherever she went, she seemed to trail a high-schooler's bright, restless sunlight behind her.

Her class roused the whole pack of delinquent cynics, Zhao Xiaodao included. Sometimes they'd tease her: Miss Lu, how come you're not married yet? Do you have a boyfriend?

…

（Two culture notes for the translator/editor: "Yang Guo" and "Little Dragon Maiden" are from Jin Yong's martial-arts classic; "Quanjude" is a well-known Beijing roast-duck restaurant, used here as the punchline of a joke about life being a mix of drinks.）