“Uncle?”
This was by no means a polite title; it could only mean… an actual blood relation.
But how did Ji Xun know?
“Come on in.”
It wasn’t just Huo Ranyin and Meng Fushan who were caught off guard; even Ben felt a sudden wave of shock and suspicion.
Yet after that brief moment of astonishment, he stepped aside, allowing the three of them to walk into the room.
He then switched on the light.
The bright illumination dispersed the darkness, fully exposing the head chef’s face.
“You are…”
“Ji Xun,” Ji Xun said. “After Chu Xingfa fled from that group, he changed his name to Ji Xingfa and married my grandmother. But my father shares no blood relation with my grandfather. As for how I know who you are—my grandfather owned a cherished small mirror with a silver casing. Inside that mirror was a photo of him holding you when you were still a baby. I only looked at that photo before setting off on this trip, so the memory is still vivid.”
The doubt in Ben’s eyes dissolved.
He nodded: “I also caught a distant glimpse of you once back then. I remember you had a younger sister. But you shouldn’t have seen me before—how did you link me to that baby?”
So that’s how, Huo Ranyin thought as well.
He recalled that when Ji Xun was leaving Ning City, he had indeed visited his grandfather’s house first, and Ji Xun had sent him a text message afterward. At the time, the message read:
“Confirmed that Grandfather lived in Fu Province for a considerable amount of time before moving to Hong Kong to change his residency; Grandfather might have known Hu Kun.”
Aside from that, there were no further clues.
No mirror, no photo.
Huo Ranyin sat down on the sofa alongside Meng Fushan.
Ji Xun inadvertently caught Huo Ranyin’s eyes, and for some reason, he felt a sudden chill run down his spine…
So cold.
I couldn’t have caught a cold from blowing in the wind just now, could I?
Feeling suspicious of his own health, Ji Xun wrapped his coat a bit tighter before giving Ben a simple answer:
“Facial features. You share the same large ears and square jaw with my grandfather, and you’re just as stout as he was in his youth. These are dominant genes, easily inherited. Add to that the fact that that diary would only end up in the hands of a descendant from back then—once you link those together, the answer becomes obvious.”
“You are indeed very clever,” Ben said sincerely. “Except for one detail, every single deduction you made was correct.”
“Which detail?” Ji Xun asked.
“The splash sound of the heavy object falling into the water—signaling Boss Ni’s ‘disappearance’—wasn’t a mechanism. I had an accomplice.”
“A woman?” Ji Xun knitted his brows. “I considered that possibility before, but those women had lost their eyes. Coordinating with a blind person is far too difficult, especially when all of them were down below the deck.”
“There’s always an exception to every rule.”
“You mean…” Realization dawned on Ji Xun. “One of the women’s eyes could still see!”
One of the women’s eyes could still see.
In an instant, Meng Fushan recalled the moment when he and Chen Jiashu had come aboard. While watching Mr. Liu’s crew toss a dead woman into the sea, he had spotted a tiny shadow on the ground.
That tiny shadow looked like a woman’s shadow…
Did it belong to the only woman on the ship who could still see?
Ji Xun did not probe further into who that woman actually was.
Huo Ranyin and Meng Fushan remained silent as well.
By tacit agreement, all three of them gently bypassed the topic of that woman’s name.
“Now that we’ve covered what happened before, let’s talk about what comes next,” Ji Xun said. “I reckon Boss Wu surviving was something you didn’t anticipate. That’s why you chose to toss out the notebook as bait to lure us in. But considering you couldn’t have known any of our true identities prior to this, that move was clearly a desperate gamble out of necessity… You didn’t have any other tricks up your sleeve, did you? Furthermore, even without the accident of Boss Wu narrowly escaping death, I still haven’t figured out how you planned to deal with Mr. Liu in the end.”
“Did you plan…
…to go down in flames together with Mr. Liu?”
The stout chef nodded calmly, as if they weren’t discussing life and death, but rather the annoying weather outside the window.
“Why?” Ji Xun asked.
“I noticed medicine in your pocket,” Huo Ranyin spoke up from the side. As the others turned their gazes toward him, he offered a brief explanation: “It’s Azathioprine, one of the most common medications used to suppress transplant rejection. And this kind of post-transplant anti-rejection drug needs to be taken long-term—even for a lifetime.”
“You got on this ship because you needed an organ replacement…” Ji Xun picked up the train of thought.
“Rather than saying I got on this ship to get an organ replacement, it’s better to ask: who actually gets to step onto this ship in the first place?” Ben smiled with deep meaning. “It wasn’t easy for you guys to get aboard either, was it? Surely you don’t think just anyone can come on board and work as a crew member?”
“Mr. Liu would only allow people he trusts to serve as crew,” Meng Fushan suddenly chimed in.
“Precisely,” Ben’s hand pressed gently against his waist. “And what’s more reassuring than someone of your own kind?”
Organ failure, needing a replacement, and thus being able to get on the ship?
That made sense. Mr. Liu would naturally feel more at ease with people like that because they shared common interests. It just so happened that Ben needed an organ replacement, so he successfully got on board…
…Wasn’t that a little too coincidental?
Ji Xun’s gaze froze:
“You went out of your way to undergo organ replacement surgery just to get on this ship—just to keep Mr. Liu from doubting you!”
What kind of reason could drive a healthy person to replace their own healthy organ?
To be willing to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their life just to get on this ship?
This was the question Ji Xun wanted to ask most. He had solved all the practical puzzles in reality, yet the puzzle inside the human heart—the one hidden deeper than the deepest realm of ghosts—was something he couldn’t unravel on his own.
“I imagine it wasn’t just because of what happened on the ship forty years ago—that was someone else’s story, after all. A father raised far away in a foreign land, whom you had never once met growing up, probably wouldn’t be enough to bear such an intense emotion,” Ji Xun said. “So, why?”
The chef shifted his sitting posture.
“I thought what you cared about most was where the jammer is.”
“There are three of us.”
“Hmm?”
“We can split up: one person to turn off the jammer, one person to make the call, and the last person stays behind to hear your reason.”
“Is the reason really that important?”
“It should be very important to you,” Ji Xun said. “You can view it as my sign of respect toward a friend who helped me.”
The chef gave it careful thought.
“You make it sound pleasant enough. In truth, I’ve been debating whether I should write this down in the diary before I die… On a ship without cell phones, no matter how much labor there is to do, one’s soul still drifts in an ocean of boredom. Diaries, which have long fallen out of fashion outside, are all the rage here instead.”
“Though now, there seems to be a better option… How about this: listen to a story I have to tell. Once I’m done, I’ll tell you where the jammer is hidden.”
The three exchanged glances.
Huo Ranyin and Meng Fushan gave Ji Xun a subtle nod.
Ben was Ji Xun’s uncle with no blood relation, but he was also a killer who had committed two murders back-to-back.
He had indeed helped them, but they couldn’t afford to lower their guard.
Either way, it was best not to provoke the person holding the most crucial key.
“Let’s start from the very beginning… One day, my mother suddenly took me away from our homeland, crossing the ocean to reach the other side of the Atlantic.
I was very young back then; I’ve already forgotten exactly how old I was.
A woman, taking a child, smuggling themselves into a foreign land without knowing the language or holding any papers—life by right should have been very bitter and harsh. But in reality, it wasn’t quite that bitter.
Because the things I wished for—like delicious snacks, or shoes and clothes—would always quietly appear by my pillow while I was asleep.
The abundant supplies erased much of my loneliness in a foreign land.
Yet even though I was young, I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t understand why my mother had brought me abroad, nor could I understand why my father—who was supposed to return home from his ship after our meeting—sent no news whatsoever.
Nor did I understand why those good things, that delicious food, and those brand-new clothes could only be kept inside our room and never worn outside.
Back then, my mother drilled it into my head, telling me to keep those things carefully hidden. She said the reason I could have them was all thanks to my father—that my father had exchanged never seeing me again for these items.
She said that although my father didn’t meet with us, his love for us was entirely transformed into these things. The more items there were, the greater his love was. She said leaving was a sacrifice, the purest form of dedication his love could offer me.
I couldn’t understand it.
Back then, I told my mother that I didn’t want these things, nor did I want to stay here—I wanted to go back and find my father.
It yielded no result.
My father remained forever on the other side of the ocean, existing only in a child’s dreams.
The child could only look for new things to fill the void left by his father.
As time passed, I made new friends in Chinatown. Kids like me—we ran wild through the streets, bumping into every passerby, sometimes barging into stores to steal things before scattering all at once.
They say that acquiring wealth without returning home is like wearing fine silk clothes in the dark of night.
Even in a child’s world, there was no shortage of rivalry and comparison.
Hardly any of the kids in Chinatown were wealthy; otherwise, they wouldn’t have gone into stores to steal.
After spending enough time with them—even though my mother repeatedly warned me not to take food or household items outside—I couldn’t help but talk about those things just to save face and boost my status among the kids…
At first, no one believed me.
They called me a liar.
Later, when I brought the items out, they finally believed me.
As everyone knows, children cannot keep secrets.
And so, the children’s parents found out too.
By then, my mother had gradually built a solid foothold in Chinatown, taking over a breakfast diner. Every day brought a steady stream of customers, and the neighbors were polite and harmonious.
But once those possessions—which far exceeded the wealth we displayed—were exposed, everything changed.
Back then, the power of gold bars was immensely formidable. I knew there were gold bars at home—I had seen them—and I told my playmates about it. I suppose they told their parents too.
And the magic of imagination is infinite.
When I spoke of a single gold bar, what they imagined was likely a box of gold bars, a chest of gold bars, or even a crate of gold bars.
Those friendly neighbors around us seemed to swap faces without warning, putting on greedy, enraged expressions instead.
First came an incident in the breakfast diner where someone claimed to have gotten food poisoning. Wanting to keep the peace, my mother offered compensation.
That, however, opened Pandora’s box.
One person after another claimed to have gotten sick, coming over to demand money. When my mother refused to give in, they smashed the breakfast diner to pieces in a fit of rage. Scalding hot oil was splashed straight toward my head, and my mother’s back was severely burned when she threw herself over me to protect me.
That time, we called the police. But the foreign police couldn’t be bothered to care about Chinese affairs.
This Chinatown had gangs, and the gangs were the real rulers there.
Our act of calling the police enraged them. The entire Chinatown began to ostracize us. From that day on, our windows were never intact again—someone was always throwing stones, wine bottles, or whatever they had in hand to shatter them. Dead rats, dead cats, and dead dogs frequently appeared inside the house.
As for every corner of the house, it goes without saying—they had long been ransacked by people looking to strike it rich.
At night, even the slightest noise would make us leap out from under the covers and run outside, terrified that they might set the place on fire or simply burst in and murder us.
During that time, we didn’t even take off our shoes when we slept.
That fear was by no means unfounded.
One night, several masked men brandishing knives burst inside. My mother and I leaped out of bed and fled, running blindly toward our neighbor’s house to pound frantically on their door.
The door never opened.
The neighbor didn’t want trouble.
However, a corner of the backyard fence opened up, and a figure flashed inside.
That was one of my playmates; her name was Miao Zhen.
In the pitch-black night, her white dress caught on the fence, acting like a guiding spirit showing us a path to survival, opening up a safe space for my mother and me to hide.
That was also the sole piece of kindness my mother and I experienced during that ordeal brought on by our exposed wealth.
When day broke, we returned to our thoroughly ransacked house.
My mother hugged me tightly, swearing as if placing a curse:
“We can’t stay here… In a mud pit like this, your father left us so that you could live a safe and prosperous life… so that you could come here and live like a high-class person! Mother will smooth the path for you, no matter the cost!”
From then on, my mother dressed up elegantly every day and left Chinatown.
A turning point came very quickly.
On another trip to the police station, my mother met a man. A foreign man.
My mother became this man’s mistress.
And so, without wasting an ounce of effort, my mother protected us, protected the money, and resolved the original root cause of it all—my education.
There was only one price to pay.
She told me that I had to leave her side and go to school alone, independently.
My mother sent me to a very good boarding school.
Every time I came out of school and returned to my mother’s side, I felt she was entirely different from the last time I saw her. With every meeting, she felt further and further away from me.
My mother had a new family and new children.
She stood far off in the distance, yet during the brief moments of each meeting, she still tirelessly spoke of her and my father’s love for me.
My father gave me money; she gave me dignity.
The growing distance between us was the best proof of her purest dedication of love toward me.
And I, indeed, gained access to a fine school, white classmates, and non-Chinatown Asian peers. I entered white schools and white society.
When I finished high school and received my university acceptance letter, my mother handed over the money my father had given her many years ago to me. When I returned to Chinatown once more…
I saw my former playmates.
Many years had marched forward, yet they were still just like before—calling their friends, running wild, barging into stores to steal and rob, only to be chased and beaten.
Their time seemed to have frozen in that past era.
I had to admit that my mother had been right.
She had brought me here, then pushed me out of the mud pit and into a glamorous society.
My father’s departure provided me with a sufficiently prosperous life in adulthood; my mother’s departure paved the path for me into adulthood.
They both had reasons why they had to leave, and both used their departures to express their final love for me.
Leaving—that word, to me, felt just like a curse.”
