“Meng Fushan—” Ji Xun took a step forward.
“You stand still, too,” Meng Fushan said coldly. “I won’t shoot at you, but I have a knife in my hand.”
“…”
“Ji Xun, use your brain. What, the moment you see your new friend, your brain turns into an endless ocean?” Meng Fushan narrowed his eyes, locking his gaze on Huo Ranyin. “Right now we are all on a ship, with no internet, no phone service. We are stranded on an isolated island, completely unable to verify outside information. By your logic, Chen Jiashu didn’t break any laws, nor was Ah Bin the killer. The most your police could do was detain him for 48 hours—where does this hopeless situation requiring your cooperation come from? Cooperate on what? He disappeared right around the same time I did, simply because he was convinced I was the killer and came to settle a personal grudge by killing me. If he were willing to cooperate with your police force to arrest me, why leave? Staying in Ning City would have been enough to cooperate with you. The logic behind this story doesn’t even hold up from the very beginning!”
“And—”
“And?” Huo Ranyin seemed to let out a faint scoff.
“And of course there’s more,” Meng Fushan continued. “Before getting on a ship, you have to know about it first. The only reason Ji Xun knew about this ship was because I told him; so where did you find out about it? Police intelligence? Maybe at any other time, but not this time. Because this time, not a single boarding location was domestic. What, the hands of the Ning City police have stretched all the way overseas to set up a sting?”
“You swapped cause and effect. You didn’t find the boarding location through Ah Bin. You found out about the boarding location first, and only unexpectedly discovered Ah Bin there.”
“Couldn’t he have found a boss who could get on the ship through Chen Jiashu’s network?” Ji Xun chimed in to interject.
“Ji Xun, you were involved in the investigation of Chen Jiashu’s case as well. Did you see any suspicious individuals related to ‘getting on the ship’ in Chen Jiashu’s network?” Meng Fushan mocked. “Let alone getting on a ship—did you guys even find any lead related to ‘May the voyage be smooth, the wind calm, and the waves settled’ or ‘ships’?”
Ji Xun fell silent.
When he participated in the investigation, he indeed hadn’t found any.
“This ship places extreme importance on anonymity. The only reason Ah Bin could find a boss who could get aboard was because that boss had exchanged words with Chen Jiashu once or twice, and as Chen Jiashu’s confidant, Ah Bin knew everything—so he knew that boss.”
“And Officer Huo—” Meng Fushan pivoted, turning back toward Huo Ranyin. “How did you find out? You can’t explain it, which leads to the conclusion I just reached: you found the location first, and then you found Ah Bin.”
“A clue that cannot be openly discussed will likely lead to a question that similarly cannot be openly answered,” Meng Fushan sneered, asking once more, “How did you get on this ship?”
He was facing Huo Ranyin, but speaking to Ji Xun.
“Ji Xun, you shouldn’t have made such an obvious oversight. I answered his questions about me, yet he didn’t answer mine about him. Don’t you think he was just beating around the bush to hide his own unspeakable path onto this ship?”
Ji Xun fell silent for a moment, then turned to Huo Ranyin: “How did you get on the ship?”
The faint, subtle mockery on Huo Ranyin’s face disappeared for the first time. He said flatly, “No comment.”
Meng Fushan wasn’t surprised by this response at all. His eyes remained fixed without flinching, and his gun-toting hand was steady as a rock: “He just said I had things I didn’t tell you, but did he tell you everything? Ji Xun, do you know that his room isn’t on the second floor, but on the third floor? The third floor, a presidential suite—a room Mr. Liu uses to entertain VIP guests. I indeed got on this ship, and I tried every possible way to bring you along. But what about him? He didn’t just manage to get aboard; he got aboard as a VIP.”
Meng Fushan let out a cold laugh.
“If the ability to board the ship is the standard for judging suspicion, his suspicion is far greater than mine.”
Ji Xun’s gaze drifted back and forth between Meng Fushan and Huo Ranyin.
Meng Fushan continued.
Just as Huo Ranyin harbored deep suspicion toward him, he had weighed Huo Ranyin endlessly as well.
“When I saw you guys back in Qin City, you were being hunted down. Those people—they were drug dealers, right? Only drug dealers would act so recklessly within the country. So he used to be a narcotics officer? Looking at his position, young and promising, having achieved great accomplishments—what, pulled off an undercover operation and wiped out a drug den?”
“A narcotics officer… a very dangerous branch of policing,” Meng Fushan said slowly. “An undercover narcotics officer… danger among dangers.”
“Among those in this line of work, some died heroically in the line of duty; some survived by a stroke of luck; and others were corrupted by the darkness.”
“Officer Huo.” The sarcasm shifted from Huo Ranyin’s face to Meng Fushan’s. “Which kind are you?”
Then, Meng Fushan finally cast a glance at Ji Xun.
“Ji Xun, if you deeply believe his deductions just now, do you believe mine? Do you trust your new friend, or your old friend?”
“I’m afraid I’m still a bit more worthy of your trust.
“At least our goals align.
“What about his goal? Do you know what it is?”
Ji Xun’s drifting gaze between the two finally settled on Meng Fushan.
“Alright,” he said simply, neither stating whom he believed nor whom he disbelieved. “What do you want to do now?”
“Proceed according to the plan,” Meng Fushan said. “Before he came in, we had already planned it out.”
Ji Xun furrowed his brow for a moment, then nodded: “True, we did plan it out. But the situation has changed now. If we leave you up here, are you two sure you can cooperate normally?”
At that, both men let out a cold sneer.
“I have a new proposal,” Ji Xun said. “Right now, you’ve all been driven into your rooms to survive on fast food. I doubt Mr. Liu made this arrangement just to check in every now and then to see if you’re staying put. He definitely wants to free up his hands to do what truly matters to him—like contacting the outside world. And that’s not impossible to achieve. In other words, assuming the worst-case scenario, time is running out for us… Once Mr. Liu successfully contacts the outside world, it will take at most three hours for a helicopter to reach the sky above this ship. Meng Fushan, let’s swap: you go down to take the photos, and I’ll stay up here to adapt to the situation.”
“No,” Meng Fushan refused directly. “Stick to the original plan.”
Ji Xun didn’t give up and tried to convince Meng Fushan again: “I think my proposal handles the current crisis better. The truth from forty years ago is the root of everything. It must be connected to all the bloodshed and truth that followed… including the truth about Ji Yu.”
The corners of Meng Fushan’s mouth tightened.
Ji Yu was an eternal wound in Ji Xun’s heart, and wasn’t she also a painful memory Meng Fushan couldn’t touch?
It was clear he was wavering a bit.
Ultimately, however, he slowly shook his head: “Ji Xun, I don’t trust him, and right now, I don’t trust you that much either. Say no more—we stick to our previous plan.”
With things having reached this point, there was indeed no point in continuing to argue.
Ji Xun let out another deep sigh and conceded: “Fine, I understand. I’ll leave the gun with you. I’m going down now to take photos for evidence, and while I’m at it, I’ll take him—”
Ji Xun glanced at Huo Ranyin.
Huo Ranyin looked back at Ji Xun coldly.
Ji Xun didn’t respond to that gaze, turning back to Meng Fushan: “—and take him along with me. No problem with that, right?”
“Nothing would suit me better,” Meng Fushan spat out four words.
Ji Xun shrugged and walked forward. In a room the size of a grain of rice, the only way forward was to brush right past Meng Fushan’s body.
When Ji Xun reached him, Meng Fushan pulled his arm inward and slightly raised the muzzle of the gun to make room.
It was at that exact moment!
Ji Xun abruptly delivered an elbow strike to Meng Fushan!
Surprised but not panicked, Meng Fushan immediately reached into his pocket and drew a weapon—he hadn’t lied; he was indeed carrying a knife. The glint of the blade flashed into Ji Xun’s eyes. Before his body could be inevitably affected, Ji Xun closed both eyes instantly and threw his weight onto Meng Fushan!
He heard Meng Fushan curse softly under his breath, and then he was slammed onto the floor. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was—
There was another person present!
Huo Ranyin!
From hitting the floor to opening his eyes, Ji Xun took only a split second. By then, the battle had undergone a significant shift: the knife had dropped to the ground, and the gun was being contested between Meng Fushan and Huo Ranyin’s hands. Then, suddenly, the gun slipped out of their grasp, flying high and tracing a parabola in the air…
Ji Xun beat everyone to it, snatching the gun.
At the same time, he flicked his toe, kicking the knife into a corner out of sight.
He then raised the gun and aimed it at the two men in front of him… Neither stopped… He had just tried this earlier, and the move was clearly not very effective.
Ji Xun couldn’t even be bothered to speak.
After a brief thought, he took two steps back, sat down on the bed, reversed the gun to point it at himself, and said succinctly:
“Stop fucking fighting. Whoever makes another move, I pull the trigger.”
“…”
The two men stopped. They looked at Ji Xun together, neither saying a word, but both bearing the same indescribable expression on their faces.
Ji Xun waved the handgun and smiled faintly at them:
“Very good, this threat works quite well. So let me repeat the current situation to help reinforce it for you: I indeed won’t shoot either of you, but the gun is in my hands now. If either of you dares to make a reckless move, I’ll put a bullet in myself. If both of you move, I’ll give myself two bullets, and then you can carry my corpse and throw it into the sea before continuing to fight and brawl to your hearts’ content.”
“Fine,” Meng Fushan said suddenly. “You keep the gun. You two cooperate, and let me go.”
“Shut up,” Ji Xun said lazily. “Or you can take a step outward and see if I dare pull the trigger.”
Meng Fushan glared at Ji Xun; if looks could kill, Ji Xun would have been torn apart by now.
Yet Meng Fushan didn’t move in the end, standing firmly in his place.
“…Alright,” Ji Xun said. “You’ve both said what you wanted to say, so it seems it’s my turn. Everyone has secrets, and everyone is lying…”
He seemed to give a faint smile.
“So I’ll use my intelligence to act as the judge here. Any objections?”
The look in Huo Ranyin’s eyes as he watched Ji Xun turned subtle, containing a hint of surprise.
Meng Fushan, however, appeared somewhat stiff: “You don’t need to act as any judge.”
“No,” Ji Xun said simply. “Ji Yu told me I have to.”
“Let’s talk about Officer Huo first.” He looked toward Huo Ranyin. “I found Meng Fushan’s analysis earlier quite reasonable. Is there anything you’d like to add? Or are you willing to tell us how you got on this ship?”
“No comment,” Huo Ranyin repeated the same words.
“Fine. Then I believe Meng Fushan’s analysis is correct, and we cannot rule out Officer Huo’s issues and suspicion,” Ji Xun said. “Similarly, I also believe there’s another possibility: the police have a duty of protection and confidentiality toward informants. Under circumstances where neither you nor I are trustworthy, his unwillingness to speak that name is completely reasonable.”
“…”
Meng Fushan didn’t refute; he accepted Ji Xun’s statement.
“Now it’s your turn, Meng Fushan…” Ji Xun said.
He then fell silent for a long time—so long that the other two began to wonder if the man sitting on the bed would ever speak again. Finally, Ji Xun spoke, his voice low like the vibration of a cello string, running all the way down to the floor, and even into the cracks below:
“Meng Fushan, you said Huo Ranyin was beating around the bush, but you’re beating around the bush, too.”
“You haven’t said a single word claiming that Chen Jiashu wasn’t killed by you.
“Are those words really that hard to say?”
Ji Xun questioned him softly. After another long pause, as if speaking drained all his remaining strength, he gently continued:
“Yeah, it really is hard. Putting myself in your shoes, your difficulty in speaking up is just like my difficulty in opening my eyes.
“Compared to that ridiculous mechanical locked room in the first victim’s quarters on this ship, the hardest locked room to solve is, after all, the locked room in one’s own heart.
“I gave myself a puzzle.
“Naturally, I couldn’t solve it.
“Because that was an answer I didn’t want to get.
“Throughout this entire case, I kept trying to convince myself that Zheng Xuewang’s so-called ‘real medical records’ were just his one-sided story—that they didn’t exist at all and shouldn’t be easily believed.”
“To be honest, convincing myself of that was really hard. Because I knew that, conversely, once it existed, an explanation far more logical than the one I spent so much effort digging out regarding Zheng Xuewang’s past twenty years would immediately emerge.”
“That person entered his office and stole those medical records. Having lost the real medical records, Zheng Xuewang naturally lied to cover himself and fool the police. Just like that modus operandi of randomly taking pills, it left the real killer with plenty of time to escape.”
“Even if the police conducted an autopsy later and discovered it was murder, they would investigate the most suspicious person, Zheng Xuewang—no, I would definitely go investigate Zheng Xuewang. After all, I was deceiving myself, lying to myself.”
“Then, through Zheng Xuewang, I would investigate the casino you meticulously prepared.”
“Of course, you pointed the way for me. Zheng Xuewang hadn’t been gambling for long—just the past month, right? The gambling location Xu Xinran frequented must have had some minor connection to this ship as well. Perhaps it was one of Mr. Liu’s methods to control these high-end talents. You got inspiration from that and treated Zheng Xuewang the exact same way…”
“At the time, Officer Huo doubted why, out of so many casinos in Ning City, Xu Xinran and Zheng Xuewang—who seemed completely unrelated—happened to be at the exact same casino.”
“Yet I kept dodging his suspicions.”
“I found the casino, and I was bound to find that ship and that warehouse. That was what you meticulously prepared for the police and for me: you handed the police a direction for investigation, and handed me a barely plausible reason.”
“A temporary victory.”
“My self-brainwashing seemed to finally hit the right track…”
“But that ship and that warehouse couldn’t have been accomplished by you alone. At most, you could tweak that ledger to make it look legitimate.”
“As for those medical instruments and the DNA of missing persons—if Chen Jiashu didn’t do it, only Mr. Liu could have helped you prepare them.”
“Everything that happened surrounding Chen Jiashu’s death was a token of allegiance you handed over to Mr. Liu.”
“Earlier, Chief Zhou and Captain Yuan’s actions in Ning City and Qin City regarding physical checkups and matching at major hospitals made Mr. Liu realize he was no longer safe. He needed a scapegoat, so you helped him find one.”
“You helped Mr. Liu cut off his tail to survive.”
“You pulled it off too brilliantly—so brilliantly that you were able to take over one of Mr. Liu’s feeder boats and bring me aboard.”
“But even the most thorough plan leaves a flaw. We even found the ledger in Chen Jiashu’s office, yet we didn’t find any symbol of ‘the ship.’ If you put the ledger there, would it have been that much trouble to put a model ship and write a few fake lines of ‘May the voyage be smooth, the wind calm, and the waves settled’?”
“I don’t think it would have been much trouble at all. Therefore, the most logical deduction is that this remained part of the killer’s meticulous plan. The determination and token of allegiance the killer displayed to Mr. Liu was merely a smoke grenade released toward him. He feigned compliance with Mr. Liu while leaving flaws and clues for the police, with his ultimate, true objective being…”
“…to bring Mr. Liu to justice, or to exact revenge on him.”
Ji Xun raised his eyes and looked at Meng Fushan.
“Am I right?”
“That’s why, from beginning to end, you never said a single word claiming ‘Chen Jiashu was not killed by me.'”
“You might have induced Zheng Xuewang, or you might have done it yourself. Whichever it was, you knew in your heart…”
“Chen Jiashu’s blood is on your hands.”
Meng Fushan closed his eyes, then opened them again: “I killed the man.”
He spoke decisively, cleanly, leaving no room for hesitation.
The result was out. Ji Xun’s throat suddenly became exceedingly dry—so dry it felt as though a fire were burning intensely inside.
He tried to make a sound, but suddenly lost his voice. He could only sit in place, listening to Meng Fushan speak.
“But this puzzle shouldn’t have been deduced by you; it should have been told by me. Told after everything is over. The reason I didn’t say ‘Chen Jiashu wasn’t killed by me’ is because I never intended to hide it from you,” Meng Fushan said flatly. “Quibbling and denying are meaningless; that would erase me, belittle you, and insult my love for Ji Yu even more.”
It was the first time he admitted to this matter.
Openly and candidly bringing out the treasure hidden in his heart.
This was the first time, and perhaps it would be the last time in his life.
“Ji Xun, I just still have things I must finish. Having walked to this point, I have no way back.” Meng Fushan looked at Ji Xun. “Don’t stop me… even if we are no longer walking the same path.”
The things Meng Fushan had to finish were precisely the things Ji Xun had to do.
“Can we still cooperate?” After a long while, Ji Xun found his voice again. “The three of us.”
“Impossible.”
“We can.”
Two voices sounded simultaneously.
The one saying impossible was Meng Fushan; the one saying we can was Huo Ranyin.
An expression of shock flashed across Meng Fushan’s face. He looked at Ji Xun, then at Huo Ranyin, as if feeling that the “we can” just now was called out by Ji Xun trying to fish in troubled waters—in any case, it shouldn’t have come from Huo Ranyin’s mouth.
Compared to him, Huo Ranyin’s expression was far more playful.
“Don’t look at me like that, I said it. The murderer admitted to killing someone—at least he was open and honest.”
“After all…”
His unfathomable gaze fell onto Ji Xun.
In those deep, dark eyes, the light of the night flickered.
“Ji Xun, both you and I can cooperate. But you haven’t been open and honest yet.”
