Kitchen Log:
Voyage No. 8 — April 12, 1976
Staple Food:
Vegetables:
Meat:
……
Utensil Sanitization & Record:
Sanitation Cleaner: Lin Xiaodao
Incident: Assistant cook and steward got into a fight; First Mate and Helm Assistant went missing.
Flipping open the back side, several handwritten diary entries were still pasted there. This time, compared to the previous diaries written with neat handwriting, the font was crooked, twisted, and considerably inferior, even containing quite a few typos and pinyin substitutions. If the first two diaries were written by an educated, cultured person, then this diary, it was feared, came from the hand of an unrefined roughneck.
April 8, 1976
The Captain died mysteriously inside a locked room—what other answer could there be? It’s nothing other than a ghost killing people. When we went to sea to make sacrifices to Mazu, someone lacked sincere devotion, which led to the Goddess’s displeasure, summoning underworld ghosts to run rampant and kill people. There’s best proof of this: the sea hasn’t been peaceful these past few days, blowing winds one moment and raining the next.
There’s no other way now. We should immediately set up an altar and perform a ritual right away, offering Mazu three sacrifices and five fruits again, begging the Goddess for juangu (grace/favor) to banish that monster!
Yet a translator on the ship named Mitt Liu or something insisted that ghosts don’t kill people—only humans do—and demanded to kancha (inspect) the scene. Who knows what magic potion he fed Jin Song to make Jin Song agree to his demand.
Hmph, educated folks—just because they can speak a few words of bird language (foreign languages), they think they’re so grand! If he’s so capable, let him go talk to the sea birds and sea fish!
But this matter… was still interesting. Everyone crowded inside the Captain’s room to watch the show.
Mitt Liu stepped forward first, claiming he would solve the mystery of the locked room. He fiddled with a fishing line at the deck’s door lock for a good while—hey, he actually locked it from the outside! Just as everyone was gasping in amazement, Mitt Liu overturned his own hypothesis. He said that because the door leading to the deck opened inward, and the corpse lay horizontally right next to the inward-opening door, it blocked the door. If the corpse blocked the door, the perpetrator could not exit from inside to outside through the door, making it impossible to escape from outside on the deck.
Don’t say—following this whole analysis, it actually made a lot of sense!
The Deck Master couldn’t help shouting in praise. Speaking of the Deck Master, Feng Silong—Brother Long—he was a first-rate good fellow who took special care of us folks at the bottom, unlike that dog-thing Captain whose eyes were on top of his head and never took us sailors seriously. Looking across the entire ship, only Brother Long was willing to stand up for us sailors and butt heads with the Captain.
Off topic… In short, before the inspection finished, after ruling out the possibility of the killer escaping from the deck door, Mitt Liu began studying the main door of the room again. Ever since the Captain was put under house arrest, an extra heavy lock with a iron chain had been added outside the door. Mitt Liu first checked whether the lock cylinder bore signs of damage, then repeatedly confirmed with the person keeping the key whether the key had ever been lost. After receiving negative answers to all of these, Mitt Liu uttered a shocking statement:
The lock along with its key had been directly stolen and swapped out mid-way for another set (there were several other similar locks stored in the warehouse)! That way, the killer could bypass the problem of having to break the lock to open the door.
To be specific, it was taking advantage of when everyone brought meals in and unlocked the door to hang it aside, replacing it with a similar lock that he held a key to. Because locking didn’t require a key, the person in charge of the key wouldn’t know.
After finishing the murder, he would take away this similar lock, re-hang the original unlocked key that he had swapped out earlier, and lock it again—then everything would be hunky-dory.
The crowd at the scene fell into a collective uproar.
My goodness, educated people’s hearts and minds are truly wicked—they could even think of an idea like this, and what’s terrifying is that when you think about it, it’s actually feasible!
Mitt Liu started talking again, asking who had delivered meals to the Captain over these past few days.
The ones who delivered meals to the Captain were Cao Hang and me.
He asked us whether, when we delivered meals inside to the Captain, we saw anyone with guijue (suspicious/furtive) behavior (how do you write those two words again?).
I said I couldn’t remember. Cao Hang shook his head along with me, but it wasn’t that he hadn’t seen anyone—it was that he had seen too many people: the First Mate, Deck Master, Chief Engineer… all sorts of people were there, which wasn’t strange. The First Mate’s room was right next door, and the First Mate was nice and hospitable, so everyone often went in and out of the First Mate’s room.
Mitt Liu furrowed his brows, as if our answer was different from what he had imagined.
Tch, look at that arrogant, all-in-control look of his…
In other words, anyone who could get close to the warehouse is a suspect, right? Jin Song summarized beside him.
But plenty of people could get close to the warehouse! The management tier could all get close, and kitchen assistants like me who needed to fetch inventory from the warehouse could get close too. So what did that mean—everyone could be dirty?
Fu Ge spoke up suddenly: I think these sailors need to be interrogated thoroughly. Everyone knows the Captain didn’t think much of the sailors on ordinary days, so the sailors probably harbored a lot of resentment in their hearts.
Dog-thing! Dog-thing! Just like that, the black pot (blame) was pushed onto us—I definitely don’t agree!
I immediately refuted out loud: You’re a manager on the ship, you can get close to the warehouse too, and you even hold the key to enter the Captain’s room—you’re the most likely killer!
Our mutual accusations were sternly interrupted by Jin Song’s commanding authority.
Jin Song said: That will be all for today.
April 11, 1976
Three days after discovering the Captain’s corpse and going through that whole round of analysis at the scene, in order to find the killer and prevent the killer from striking again, everyone’s past daily life was completely turned upside down.
For three consecutive days, all knives, sharp objects, and ropes on our ship were placed under strict control. Old Chu was constantly stared at even while swinging his chef’s knife to cook. Every night at nine o’clock sharp, everyone gathered in the mess hall to make beds on the floor. The stench of smelly feet permeated the mess hall, and people’s snoring rose and fell in waves. As for those who were kept awake by the noise… like me… they had to suffer from having too sharp a sense of smell, smelling all kinds of sour, pickled foot odor, while also suffering from having too good eyesight, watching cockroaches crawl past their heads…
And that was just the first half of the night. By the second half of the night, when a bit of sleepiness finally arrived, someone would want to get up to relieve themselves. Getting up couldn’t be done alone either—you had to find someone to accompany you. After a bit of fuss, everyone who had fallen asleep was woken up. Later, they didn’t even let people go outside to relieve themselves; a urinal was set up in a corner of the mess hall, and whoever wanted to use the toilet in the middle of the night went right there.
If that weren’t enough, in the middle of the night, someone knocked over the urinal, and a chorus of vomiting sounds rang out…
Sleeping at night was one ordeal; forming teams to patrol during the day was another. In short, for three straight days, everyone was thoroughly tormented. Every single person was exhausted in body and mind, able to fall asleep while standing up, yet holding terrible tempers—like a ball of fire stashed in their hearts that would explode at the slightest spark of oil.
And in stark contrast to this was the fact that there was still no sign of progress in finding the killer.
Everyone was guarded to such an extent—convicts doing hard labor in prison lived a bit easier than us. The killer wasn’t an idiot; would they still expose their flaws for you to catch at a time like this!
Life on the ship was truly miserable and suffocating.
I thought of Miss Huo and delivered a platter of fruit to her. It wasn’t worth much—just some apples and oranges that kept well. But even this bit of stuff was a privilege exclusive to those working in the kitchen. I didn’t know if Miss Huo would look down on it…
I overthought it. Miss Huo happily thanked me and even ate an orange segment right in front of me.
It was a bit sour, so sour that yu-yan-er (she) wrinkled her face and stuck out her tongue. The one procuring ship supplies was still Fu Ge, that manager—that dog-thing! On one hand, he framed me, while on the other hand, he embezzled everyone’s meal funds, using sour oranges and rotten apples that no one would want even if thrown on the ground to fool us!
After delivering the stuff, I was originally going to leave, but Miss Huo called me back, telling me to eat fruit together with her.
I was vastly shocked. I should have refused. Although everyone didn’t say it explicitly, there was a tacit understanding to maintain a certain distance from Miss Huo so as not to disturb her. But when my name came out of Miss Huo’s mouth, it was as if I had been possessed… No, no, it was as if I had fallen lovesick—I sat down crookedly.
‘Lin Xiaodao’, ‘Lin Xiaodao’… Every time my name emerged from Miss Huo’s mouth, a bit more suffering welled up from my heart. I didn’t know what had happened to me—suddenly I felt dissatisfied with everything about myself, especially dissatisfied with my name that lacked any imposing aura whatsoever. This mediocre, unremarkable name seemed to reflect my mediocre, unremarkable life.
I thought, if I ever had the chance, I must give myself an overbearing, mighty name.
Miss Huo suddenly asked me: Have you found the killer who murdered the Captain?
I snapped out of my zi-y-zi-y (an idiom describing self-blame/self-reproach) and saw Miss Huo’s thin, pointed chin and the dark circles beneath her eyes. It turned out that over these past few days, not only were the people outside harboring mutual suspicions and exhausting themselves, but Miss Huo was also suffering right along with us.
An idea brewed in my heart…
But I couldn’t make up my mind. In the end, I couldn’t give Miss Huo an answer either, retreating in a timid, ugly display. Yet Miss Huo constantly watched me with tolerance until long after I left; I still remembered those bright, beautiful eyes of hers… Those eyes barged into my dreams, being the only non-mediocre thing in my mediocre dreams.
I made my decision. When everyone gathered in the mess hall to eat again, I stood up and announced: Treat me as the killer who murdered the Captain!
The crowd was in an uproar. But I told everyone that I wasn’t the real killer; the reason I stood up to take the fall was simply that everyone was tired and looked ready to break down, yet the investigation into the killer still had no leads. Most importantly, I didn’t want Miss Huo to continue worrying endlessly along with us. Since Miss Huo appeared on our ship, we had a responsibility to protect her so she could live happily.
My speech won applause from the whole room. I believed these words of mine spoke into everyone’s hearts.
Miss Huo wasn’t just my dream—she was also the dream of everyone else, or at least the dream of all us sailors.
She was the person whom, after this voyage, we would never be able to touch again.
April 12, 1976
Since the ‘killer’ had been found, there had to be a ceremony.
Underneath the mattress of my room, a rope with damaged skin tissue residue was found—this was the very rope that ‘strangled’ the Captain.
With the stolen property found, I lowered my head and gave a confession, roughly detailing the method Mitt Liu had reasoned earlier about swapping locks to enter the Captain’s room. With ‘physical evidence’ and ‘confession’ complete, I was escorted and locked away in a room right in front of Miss Huo, with a sailor individually ‘guarding’ me.
During this process, I stole glances at Miss Huo.
Upon learning that the killer had been found, Miss Huo indeed brightened up. She seemed to have forgotten that I was the one who delivered the fruit platter to her earlier, but I could understand—we only faced Miss Huo alone, while Miss Huo faced all of us. It was normal for her not to remember me.
The ship decided to hold a dance party, proposed by Mitt Liu. He said now that the killer was caught, everyone should celebrate and wash away the gloom.
That guy couldn’t do anything else, but his mouth was exceptionally formidable… Everyone was moved by his words and began actively preparing.
By evening, they cleared out the mess hall where everyone usually ate, hung up various decorations, added many lighting bulbs, and luxuriously set out wine and meat on the tables, even bringing out the Captain’s prized cassette player to play music.
I told everyone I wanted to attend the banquet too.
Everyone objected—if the killer attended the banquet, what kind of killer would he be!
I settled for the next best thing: You stay inside, and I’ll hide outside to watch.
After hesitating, everyone agreed, giving me a tiny place to stay outside the mess hall window.
Miss Huo came out.
She wore a beautiful red dress. That velvet red dress was made by us sailors tearing down window curtains, and that dainty, delicate pearl crown of Miss Huo’s was undoubtedly crafted from pearls hauled up from the sea by us sailors!
The banquet began. Mitt Liu was the first to step forward and dance with Miss Huo. I couldn’t understand the steps they danced, only hearing whispering voices inside saying it was some Hua-whatever-zi (Waltz), a very impressive thing that everyone in management had gathered together to start learning.
I huddled outside the window, looking inside toward a small, glowing window frame in the dark.
The aroma of wine, the scent of food, and that red skirt hem—swirling, swirling, swirling amidst the rising music and dense fragrance…
Everyone except me bowed their usually proud heads, queuing up to wait for a dance with Miss Huo. Miss Huo was the sole queen of this dance party, and everyone else was a subject beneath her skirt. If anyone could gain the Queen’s favor for a second time at the dance party, he would also gain the jealousy of everyone present… Yet although us sailors contributed to Miss Huo’s clothes and jewelry, sailors didn’t understand Hua-whatever-zi at all. One reckless fellow went up and stepped on Miss Huo’s foot, and after that, no sailor dared to go up again…
Even with these awkward situations mid-way, the dance party was still tremendously lively. Everyone danced and sang, cheerful laughter spreading far across the pitch-black sea. This ship, just like that, turned into a little paradise on the water.
The dance party went on for a long time. In the end, the wine was finished, the cups and plates were left in a mess, and everyone was somewhat plastered. Except for me—as the ‘killer’, I had to be ‘guarded’ in the room, being the only person who couldn’t enter the dance party and could only drink full gulps of cold wind.
Miss Huo felt a bit dizzy and went back to her room to sleep first.
Everyone else was plastered too, but the banquet scene still needed to be cleaned up. These were originally tasks for the sailors, but today, the grand masters of the management tier weren’t in a hurry to leave either, sitting in their seats one by one to digest their food.
Brother Long suddenly lamented: Tonight’s atmosphere is really nice, as if it washed away all the friction from the past three days. Then he asked: Tonight, are we all still going to sleep together?
This topic was fine unmentioned, but once mentioned, everyone inevitably recalled the snoring, foot odor, cockroaches, and urine. Instantly, the warm atmosphere from just moments ago vanished like a dream and illusion.
Helm Assistant Qian Zhenyi was First Mate Jin Song’s man. Qian Zhenyi had a pretty good temper and was quite considerate of the lower sailors. He said: Going on like this isn’t a solution either—can we find a new way out?
Actually, we already have a killer, Fu Ge muttered in the crowd. Am I right?
Killer! What do you mean we already have a killer! Wasn’t he talking about me? I already made a sacrifice for everyone—now you people still want to continue scraping my bones and sucking my marrow?
That’s fake! At the critical moment, the drunken Jin Song let out a loud shout.
Then, he sat up a bit straighter and called out to me standing outside, telling me to come in.
I went in, glaring fiercely at Fu Ge and the management tier who wore the same pair of pants as Fu Ge.
Unwilling to show weakness, Fu Ge met my gaze, even giving me a provocative smile.
Give it a rest, all of you, Jin Song said. The current ‘killer’ is just us deceiving ourselves. We can treat him as the ‘killer’ and handle him to comfort ourselves, but will the killer stop posing a threat to us just because we did this?
The killer might just have a grudge against the Captain and not necessarily want to kill us, Fu Ge muttered again.
There is indeed that possibility. We all hope the killer only wants to kill the Captain, Jin Song said. How about this: everyone has been tired these past few days, so I’ll give a solution.
Since finding the killer is an impossible task right now, let’s not look for any killer anymore. I also hope the killer hidden among us stops here, so everyone lives in peace and harmony—peace is a blessing. Since we’re not looking for the killer, the Captain’s corpse must be disposed of.
Let’s simply draw blind straws. Whoever draws the straw will throw the Captain’s corpse stored in the freezer off the ship. Once the corpse is gone, the evidence destroyed, when we dock back at shore, we will unanimously tell the police that the Captain accidentally fell into the sea and drowned while fishing. That way, what the killer did will be completely buried in the sea winds and waves.
As for the person who draws the straw, there’s no need for psychological burden. Tonight, apart from you, none of us will go to the freezer—we’ll all stay in our own rooms. That way, no one will know who actually threw the Captain’s corpse overboard.
Now, regarding my idea, who agrees and who objects? Those who object, please raise your hands.
After Jin Song finished this long speech, silence fell over the scene; no one raised a hand.
Jin Song looked around and said: Then I’ll take it that everyone agrees.
Saying that, Jin Song had Helm Assistant Qian Zhenyi fetch a large box and dig an opening for a hand to serve as a drawing box, along with twenty-one toothpicks as straws. In front of everyone, he marked a red pen trace on one of the straws, packed them all into the straw box, and let everyone draw.
Every single person at the scene, including Jin Song and Qian Zhenyi, pulled out a toothpick from the straw box. These toothpicks were hidden in their palms, unseen by others.
Then Jin Song motioned to everyone: Disperse, disperse, go back to your rooms.
I followed outside as well. Originally I should have returned to my room, but halfway there, I thought of Miss Huo. When Miss Huo left the banquet, she said her head hurt a bit—I wondered if she felt better now?
When holding the banquet, everyone was inside while only I was outside—lonely and cold. Now, everyone had returned to their rooms; if only I quietly went to Miss Huo’s room to take a quiet peek through the window, even if still lonely and cold, I would possess something others didn’t have, which would bring some satisfaction, wouldn’t it?
I arrived in front of Miss Huo’s room, but there was already someone present at the scene!
Fu Ge!
Fu Ge secretly used a key to open Miss Huo’s door, sneaking inside in the pitch-black darkness!
Dog bastard! Dog bastard! Dog bastard! Dog bastard! Dog bastard!!!
I rushed up and directly got into a scuffle with Fu Ge. We fought noisily, startling the sleeping Miss Huo awake. Upon seeing us, Miss Huo let out a sharp scream.
At the exact same time, sounding simultaneously with Miss Huo’s scream, was a heavy object crashing into the seabed with a “thud” sound.
Fu Ge and I were restrained by the crowd that rushed over.
April 13, 1976
Only the next day did I learn that last night, while Fu Ge and I were fighting, the Captain’s corpse indeed fell into the sea, but Jin Song and Qian Zhenyi went missing as well.
Dark bloodstains remained on the floor of the hatch door near the cold storage that opened toward the sea—truly terrifying!
Everyone suspected Jin Song and Qian Zhenyi were dead. Only Mitt Liu held a dissenting opinion, saying without seeing corpses, one must be precise and call it missing. Tch, the ship is only this big, and people can’t be found anywhere; the surroundings are a vast ocean. If people aren’t on the ship, they can only have entered the sea. What, can they still crawl back onto the ship alive from the sea?
Dead means dead—
I, Lin Xiaodao, promise that all diary entries on this page are authentic contents written by myself; hereby noted.
Silence.
Confronted with the bloodstains on the room deck, what was left for the crowd at the scene was only silence.
Everyone looked at each other in mutual shock. The things analyzed earlier in front of Boss Lin’s corpse seemed to be completely overturned at this moment. Now, only this patch of bloodstains remained in front of them, returning a foul, reeking smile to them—the killer’s smile.
Amidst the crowd’s paralysis, Meng Fushan was still the first to step forward.
He observed meticulously.
The bloodstains on the deck were concentrated in one spot, not yet completely coagulated, appearing roughly circular with scattered secondary blood droplets splashed around. Based on the landing shape of these blood droplets, it was roughly estimated that they dropped from a height of about one meter in diameter. This location indicated that a sharp weapon had stabbed the abdomen or lower back, and then, while the victim was in severe pain and unable to react in time, they were flipped over and thrown directly into the sea.
Considering further that there were no spray patterns at the scene, it was highly likely that the murder weapon was still stuck inside the victim’s body, sinking into the ocean along with the victim.
“Who lives in this room?” The crowd recovered their voices at this time.
Someone falling into the sea and dying was shocking, but what was perhaps even more shocking in this matter was that they had absolutely no idea who it was that fell into the sea and died.
“What is the room number?” Mr. Liu asked at this moment. Entering too hurriedly earlier, no one had paid attention to the room doorplate.
“It’s Room 228,” a bodyguard standing closer to the outside said hastily.
“Room 228…”
Mr. Liu pondered, lowering his voice to instruct the bodyguard beside him a few words, sending him to check the information of the boss staying here. The bodyguard quickly showed his phone screen to Mr. Liu.
Mr. Liu took a glance: “The boss staying here has the surname Ni.”
Then he said no more.
Everyone had their faces covered; stating a surname was equivalent to saying nothing at all.
Meng Fushan could only recall the missing boss based on all the bosses present at the scene. Sweeping his brain thoroughly, he only remembered that such a boss was standing in the central hall in the morning, but as for more specific height, approximate weight, what prominent features were on his body, or what the chin exposed outside the mask looked like—he couldn’t remember at all, only recalling he was roughly a middle-aged man in his forties.
If Ji Xun were here right now, with just a single glance, he would be able to draw every single person who was in the central hall at that time down to the finest detail.
Pity that guy was still beneath the deck at this moment.
Who knew whether he had noticed something was amiss.
Meng Fushan’s thoughts strayed for a fraction of a second before gathering back to continue analyzing the situation in front of him.
Why would the location of the struggle be on the deck? If the excuse was entering the room to search as well, the position this boss stayed in should have been inside the room. Did the killer use some rhetoric to entice the other party out onto the deck for an easier strike?
Or could it be that the other party wasn’t a so-called ‘search member’ at all, but an acquaintance of this boss?
Meng Fushan’s gaze swept across the four bosses found on the second floor.
Two bosses of similar status talking about business on the deck, and one of them suddenly launching a surprise attack, stabbing the victim and throwing him into the sea… seemed completely logical and easy to execute.
“Was this room checked before? Who checked it?” Mr. Liu asked.
“It was me and the head chef,” the kitchen assistant present spoke up. Because the murder took place in the room he checked, he was a bit trembling and fearful. “At that time no one was in the room, nor were there bloodstains on the deck. The head chef and I checked around everywhere, and after seeing no jammer, we left…”
This was also natural—such prominent bloodstains couldn’t possibly have been missed by the people coming to check at that time.
“From the time we heard the sound to when we ran down, at most it was only one or two minutes. In these one or two minutes, it is absolutely impossible for the killer to run to the ends of the earth. After killing the person, if the killer walked toward the central hall, he would inevitably run into us coming down; thus, right now only two paths remain for the killer: one is running toward the direction of the bridge, where there are stairs leading to the first floor; the second is hiding in the remaining rooms.”
When Mr. Liu said this, he paused.
The four bosses staying on the second floor said in confusion: “There’s no one in our rooms, and as for the remaining rooms, you guys used the master key to go in and look just now—there was no one in any of them either. Then of course the killer ran away from the bridge stairs; does that even need considering?”
Mr. Liu noncommittally refrained from agreeing or disagreeing.
“Mr. Liu, do you mean the killer is one of the four bosses present here?” Boss Short jumped up. Although short in height, his jumping ability was quite good, leaping three feet high. “I don’t believe it! It’s already been said that no one knows anyone, and coming here is just for fun. We—everyone at the scene—cannot possibly be the killer! The way I see it, the ship is so big, maybe it really is possible that the killer is a ‘ghost’!”
Boss Jiang’s face turned pale and ash-gray.
“The kind of ghost that you bunch of useless bodyguards couldn’t find on such a big ship,” Boss Short added. “A human ghost!”
Boss Jiang could finally breathe again.
“Also, I remember this boss wasn’t very old either—a middle-aged man, right?” Unbeknownst to others, Boss Short’s memory was actually quite good. “Just now you guys were being secretive about some ‘forty years ago.’ Forty years ago, this boss was still a little kid wearing open-crotch pants! Nothing could possibly have anything to do with him. Yet now he’s dead, making it clear that your affairs from forty years ago dragged us innocent people down! No, not just us—I think those crew members are in great danger too! I propose everyone speak openly and state clearly the events from forty years ago, so we can know whether we still face danger later and what kind of danger!”
Except for Mr. Liu, Boss Jiang, and Boss Wu, almost everyone looked toward them.
Those crew members showed an even more obvious urge to speak yet holding back.
“There is no forty years ago,” Mr. Liu had long stowed away the strange look on his face, speaking lightheartedly.
“Even the nursery rhyme has come out,” Boss Radish was displeased too. “And you still say there isn’t?”
“The nursery rhyme is another matter,” Mr. Liu said.
The four bosses at this moment felt out of loop with the steps: “What nursery rhyme, what forty years ago?”
Boss Short quickly explained the situation upstairs clearly to these four bosses who hadn’t gone up, heavily emphasizing frightening sights like “Clear blue sky, wild barren land,” “strangled to death,” “tongue placed in hands as a sacrifice to Mazu,” and “Boss Jiang being extremely unsightly and losing composure.”
One among these four who grew long hair tied into a low ponytail gasped: “I know about this!”
Men with long hair were extremely rare, so everyone remembered him instantly. Boss Short slapped his thigh as well: “Boss Ponytail, hurry up and tell us!”
“Boss Ponytail?” Boss Ponytail was confused and couldn’t care to argue, quickly telling the content he knew.
This story was very long.
After listening for a long time, everyone discovered that summarized, it was a terrifying ghost story about desecrating one’s own corpse, eating corpses, eating them with variety, and eating them with high standards.
“You all didn’t know?” Seeing no one speak, Boss Ponytail added, “This is widely circulated on the ship, right? Meimei told me—it’s a script from a murder mystery game (Ju Ben Sha). I’ve always wanted to play it, but could never gather enough people. Ah, none of you like playing this…”
Who was Meimei again?
Presumably one of the women on the ship.
Perhaps among the women and crew members on the ship, this had long circulated widely.
Everyone thought numbly. Boss Short began counting on his fingers: “Now the murder mystery game has leaked into reality. If the killer really wants to kill according to the murder mystery… this ghost story, how many more of us have to die… ten-odd, twenty? Are the people on the ship enough for him to kill?”
“Alright, stop talking nonsense,” Mr. Liu said with slight impatience, as if everyone present was making a fuss without rhyme or reason. “How could a murder mystery game like that be run on the ship? It’s just a variation of the Mazu legend. It’s not surprising for such ghost stories to circulate at sea.”
“The first way of dying in the story corresponds one-to-one with the scene—we saw the tongue. But the second way of dying in the story is gouging out a kidney—why was there no kidney at the scene?” Boss Short suddenly raised a doubt.
“Not enough time?” Boss Radish guessed.
“We ran down only after hearing the sound of falling into water, whereas the activity of gouging out a kidney had to be performed while the victim was still on the ship,” the silver mask corrected.
It wasn’t gouging out a kidney, Meng Fushan thought.
Just now, Jiang, Wu, and Liu changed color upon seeing this scene, yet this scene only contained two pieces of information: bloodstains and falling into water. If these had to be forcefully linked to the nursery rhyme, it was fearfully only the point he derived from the shape of the bloodstains—that the deceased suffered an injury to the abdomen.
The kidneys are located right in the lumbar region of the abdomen.
Thus, what triggered their memories wasn’t some ghostly prophecy, but a real murder scene!
What that legend implied was actually different murder techniques.
“It wasn’t the tongue—it was the rope,” Meng Fushan said. “When a person is strangled by a rope, instinctual breathing drives them to want more air, so the tongue involuntarily sticks out. The first person cutting off his own tongue actually implied death by asphyxiation. And the second and third persons gouging out their kidneys refers to being stabbed in the kidney.”
“Then doesn’t that mean a third person will be stabbed?!” Boss Short yelled out. “What sharp weapons are there on the ship? Hurry up and confiscate them! Confiscate his crime tools!!”
“I’m afraid confiscating sharp weapons won’t be enough either,” the silver mask said. “The fourth way of dying in the story is the skull being struck, which any blunt instrument can accomplish—you can’t confiscate all blunt instruments on the entire ship.”
“Oh right, and,” the silver mask whispered, seemingly smiling, “the fifth way of dying is having the blood of the entire body sacrificed. Thinking about it, for something to travel across the entire body via blood, the possibility of a toxin is extremely high. Poison can be put into food—are you going to eat nothing from now on?”
“…The, the killer has to follow rules too, right? Without rules, nothing can be established,” Boss Radish stammered. “The killer must at least kill the third person meant to die by a sharp weapon before dealing with the rest…”
“Since everyone attaches such importance to this ‘story,'” Mr. Liu smiled as well. Since everyone firmly insisted on analyzing the ‘nursery rhyme,’ he simply joined them in analyzing it and put forward an exceptionally razor-sharp view, “The two corpses stabbed through the kidneys by sharp blades in the story appeared simultaneously. Have you ever considered that the third person was already killed, and the killer simply put on the deceased’s suit, donned the deceased’s mask, mixed in among us, and is watching our show?”
The crowd exploded. Before various screams flew everywhere, Mr. Liu, who triggered the commotion among all the bosses, spoke again:
“However, please rest assured—this kind of thing is very easy to solve. As long as you let me see your true faces beneath the masks.”
“…”
Meng Fushan couldn’t help glancing at the silver mask.
“Take off the masks?” The seven bosses hesitated.
The masks were their protective amulets; only by wearing masks could they do whatever they pleased on this ship. Once the masks were taken off, all the order of ordered society would instantly return to its proper place at the same time.
“Of course they must be taken off,” Mr. Liu said. “But on the top layer of the ship, inside my lounge, taken off while having tea one-on-one with me. At that time, only two bodyguards will stay by my side, and at all times, we will still guarantee everyone’s identity security.”
He concluded with a piece of dry humor:
“Even if there is no physical safety, at least there is reputation safety.”
At the same time, beneath the deck of the giant vessel, a window was kicked open.
Next, a head popped out.
Ji Xun had the back of his head facing the surging sea surface and his forehead aligned with the boundless sky. His gaze traced the clean, smooth white hull of the giant ship, climbing up bit by bit until reaching the deck railing that seemed hopelessly unreachable within his line of sight. After a long silence, he let out a soulful exclamation:
“How the fuck am I supposed to get up there?!”
