In the park at night, the dim lights grew increasingly obscured behind the swaying greenery. The faces of the people passing to and fro seemed shrouded in a hazy mist, making it impossible to see their features clearly.
The location Ji Xun and Hu Yuan had agreed upon was right by the waterfront in this park. A park at night was already a resting spot far removed from surveillance cameras; the park’s waterfront maximized that distance from any casually passing foot traffic.
The appointed time was nine o’clock in the evening. By 8:55 PM, the two of them had already brought along their night-fishing gear and were waiting by the shore.
Within barely ten minutes, a figure dressed in loose sportswear and wearing a baseball cap walked over from the distance. As this androgynous silhouette drew closer, sitting down next to Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin to fiddle with the fishing gear she had brought, the two men only recognized her as Hu Yuan from a faint yet familiar fragrance.
White musk.
At first sniff, it was a warm, clean, comfortable, and restrained frankincense. But if one inhaled it for longer, they would discover that within the gentle frankincense, a thread of bittersweet medicinal aroma occasionally drifted through. The medicinal notes made the frankincense stand out, while the frankincense softened the medicine.
It was a scent that preserved the professionalism of a “forensic pathologist” while diluting the cold ruthlessness inherent to the occupation.
A perfume that did not suit Hu Yuan at all, Ji Xun thought to himself.
A careful analysis would reveal that Hu Yuan’s personality was poles apart from the perfume she sprayed. She had specifically chosen this scent perhaps only to use its warm tones to mask the grim, ghostly realm inside her heart.
“It’s somewhat unexpected.”
The wind carried Hu Yuan’s voice over. With a plop, the luminous float plunged into the water. Hu Yuan had already set up her gear, beginning her angling and officially commencing her dialogue with them.
“I knew I couldn’t fool you for long, but I didn’t expect you to figure it out by the second time,” Hu Yuan said. “When did you start suspecting me? When you saw me in Qin City?”
“Do you want to hear the truth or a lie?” Ji Xun asked.
“The truth.” Beneath the brim of her cap, Hu Yuan shot Ji Xun a glance. “I’m not trying to act cute or play coy with you.”
“So, tonight is an open and honest talk?” Ji Xun confirmed.
“Otherwise, there would be no need for me to show up,” Hu Yuan affirmed.
“The very first time I met you,” Ji Xun revealed. “When I got the MP4 player and returned to the police station with Tan Mingjiu, and saw you and Huo Ranyin appearing at the entrance.”
Hu Yuan fell silent for a brief moment. “Why? Back then, I shouldn’t have exposed any flaws, and you shouldn’t have obtained any clues either.”
“A sort of intuition,” Ji Xun said nonchalantly. “Your appearance was just too coincidental. It was like a criminal returning to the scene out of curiosity and smugness after successfully pulling off a crime.”
“Humph…” Hu Yuan muttered. “As expected of you.”
“That is precisely the first question I want to ask today,” Ji Xun said. “Why pick me?”
“You have talent, Ji Xun.”
“I’m not the only one with talent. Captain Huo sitting right next to me has both talent and status,” Ji Xun countered. “It would make far more sense for you to choose him over me.”
“How do you know I didn’t choose Captain Huo?”
In the dark of night, Hu Yuan’s voice was like a wisp of light smoke, coiling around their eardrums amidst the obscurity.
“What do you mean?” Huo Ranyin finally spoke up.
“Captain Huo, even if I didn’t seek you out, you would eventually find that path… the path I am searching for as well. Our destination is the same; we are fellow travelers on the same road, and it’s merely a matter of time before we converge,” Hu Yuan said flatly.
“Be clear,” Huo Ranyin’s voice carried an implicit warning. “Stop speaking in riddles.”
“The Dingbo,” Hu Yuan uttered the three words.
Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin’s spirits jolted.
That was the ocean-going vessel that had sunk in a maritime disaster, which allowed Old Hu to switch identities, and was registered under the name of Huo Ranyin’s grandfather, Huo Shanyuan.
“You’ve heard that story, right?” Hu Yuan added. “The story Grandpa told Lan Lan.”
Hu Yuan’s voice was ghostly in the night. Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin inevitably recalled the heavily altered ghost story based on the Mazu Goddess that Lan Lan had told them in the hospital after her attempted suicide.
“Blue is the sky, wild is the land, a lone ship sails down a desolate strand…”
In the quiet night, a clear, chilly female voice suddenly rang out; it was Hu Yuan softly chanting as she faced the abyss-like river.
The river channel in the park was long and wide. In the distance, the faint silhouette of a boat loomed, sailing toward them. Was the movement floating ahead of the vessel just river water, mist, or had it become the corpses of pigs and sheep pulling the ship?
Ji Xun felt a light shiver run down his spine.
“By bringing this up, are you trying to tell us,” Huo Ranyin said, “that a murder is hidden inside this horror story?”
This inference barely required any deduction—in a materialistic world, when police officers encounter a ghost story, this is just about the only conclusion they would draw. In fact, the first time they heard the story, they had already considered this exact possibility.
But Hu Yuan’s answer was unexpected.
“I don’t know. Grandpa never went into detail about that story; it was as if it were just a story. However…”
The critical details—things Huo Ranyin and Ji Xun didn’t know—lay right after Hu Yuan’s “however.”
“I have seen them.”
“‘Them’?” Ji Xun murmured.
“The other people from the ship.” Hu Yuan seemed to smile. “Grandpa was certainly not the sole survivor of that maritime disaster. There were others, and their names are no longer what they used to be either.”
The two men immediately realized that this seemingly simple sentence revealed a highly unusual piece of information. The people who came off the Dingbo had all changed their names and surnames.
Why would they do such a thing?
“How many people did you see?” Ji Xun asked.
Through the darkness of the night, Hu Yuan turned her face toward the two of them for the first time. She cast them a glance filled with appreciation, as if to say she hadn’t come in vain tonight.
“Five people. I only saw five people.”
Ji Xun recalled the obituary for the Dingbo maritime disaster he had read in the newspapers. The obituary clearly stated that there were 22 crew members aboard the Dingbo.
Hu Yuan had seen five people… and counting Hu Yuan’s grandfather, that made six in total.
Six people out of 22. What about the remaining 16? Was it that Hu Yuan failed to discover them, or had they already vanished?
“This is exactly what I meant when I said Captain Huo would discover it sooner or later. He must figure all of this out. This 40-year-old mystery, tracing its source back to the Dingbo, requires him to solve it. Because that ship belonged to the Huo family, and because of the woman my grandfather loved, that sapphire kept on the ship… Oh right, it’s not just him; there’s also you, Ji Xun.”
“Me?” Ji Xun muttered. His attention hadn’t actually focused immediately on Hu Yuan’s words.
He was thinking about the “sapphire on Old Hu’s ship” that Hu Yuan had brought up again—who on earth was that? Was it Huo Ranyin’s grandmother, Huo Ranyin’s mother, or… or was it Huo Qiying, who was buried beneath the nameless gravestone in the Huo family cemetery?
Only then did his focus gradually reel back in, noticing the direction of Hu Yuan’s words. “Me? What does this matter have to do with me?”
His only connection to this whole affair was his younger sister…
“Ji Xun, where is your ancestral hometown?” Hu Yuan abruptly asked a seemingly irrelevant question.
“I’m a native of Ning City,” Ji Xun said.
He had been in Ning City since birth, and his parents—thinking up to this point, Ji Xun came to a sudden halt. His mother was a native of Ning City, but his father… His father was not close to his grandparents. In the few, limited two or three times they had met, his grandfather was a scrawny old man, emaciated from hunger. He was capable of eating a lot, yet didn’t really like to eat. And furthermore, he had… a Fujian accent.
Ji Xun suddenly snapped his eyes toward Hu Yuan.
Hu Yuan’s face was the sole speck of white amidst the varying depths of the surrounding darkness, pale like a mask floating in midair.
“Fate has bound us together,” Hu Yuan said softly.
“…What else do you know?” After a long silence, Huo Ranyin asked.
“Nothing more,” Hu Yuan shook her head regretfully. “You’ve investigated my grandfather, so you know he was a cunning and cautious man. I don’t know as much as you think I do, but precisely because of that, I want to uncover the true face of all this even more.”
“Why?” Ji Xun asked.
Hu Yuan picked up on a deeper meaning within this straightforward question. She offered a slight smile.
“Do you think I’m doing this for justice or the truth? No, I am simply curious about this mystery that has spanned my entire childhood—curiosity is the greatest driving force of humanity.”
Just as Huo Ranyin and Ji Xun had been the first to arrive, they were also the first to leave. Hu Yuan remained in her spot, continuing to fish.
The splashing of the flowing water and the rustling of the wind through the leaves swept her back to that mountain in Qin City.
A tiny version of herself, tailing behind her grandfather, following him up the mountain. Her luck had been great that day; there was no one else on the mountain. She had climbed for a long time, only catching glimpses of her grandfather’s straight, sturdy back appearing and disappearing around the mountain bends.
She followed and followed. From day into night.
She still remembered how maple leaves carpeted the entire mountain back then. Swept up by the wind, it looked as if flames were rising from beneath her feet, burning across the peaks. Later on, she witnessed that scene… She saw her grandfather watching that wicked act: a person pulling a handcart was dumping a corpse into a concrete statue.
The person with the handcart left, but then came a short man who swapped out the sign beside the concrete statue. After that, the short man left, her grandfather left, and she was preparing to leave too.
Right at that moment, she saw it… a short, dark shadow.
The short man who had swapped the sign on the Buddha statue appeared right before her eyes, completely silent, like a ghost.
The night wind felt a bit cold.
Author’s Note: This chapter references clues from earlier text:
- Ji Xun’s first meeting with Hu Yuan – Chapter 7.
