After counter-questioning three stories one by one, Yu Cisheng continued:
“As for the diary… I admit, that matter was a worldly form of evil. That was a very shallow thing I did during my youth, before understanding more information and more of the world.
It was an immature investment; I wanted to use that investment to create one of my works.”
Yu Cisheng engaged in self-reflection and self-criticism.
Yet he immediately followed with:
“However, that wasn’t a prank. It was genuinely a form of help I extended to him using the means I could think of.
A father who raped a mother and committed domestic violence against a child, a mother who turned a blind eye to her child being abused, and ultimately, even wanting my father to join them in discussing how to murder an outsider… All of this made me sick. Shouldn’t people so full of sin resist? Shouldn’t they escape?
In my father’s diplomatic phrasing, I wanted to bestow some kindness upon him.”
“Is your way of resisting sin to create a brand-new, deeper sin?”
“Then tell me: how should a seven-year-old child correctly and effectively resist his parents? Call the police? Could calling the police really save Huo Ranyin?
Or rather, did Huo Ranyin truly need someone else to save him?
I think the reason high school Huo Ranyin remained utterly smitten with you within just a few days wasn’t because you ‘saved’ him back at Qin University High School.
You merely showed him another path—another path that he too could walk.
And I… I truly merely showed him a path as well.
A dark path to shed those sins and kill those sins.”
“You should still count yourself lucky,” Ji Xun spoke up. “The sharpest thing within my hand’s reach here is a wine glass.”
Yu Cisheng thought for a moment: “You mean to say that if you had a gun in your hand, you’d already have put a hole in me? Huo Ranyin wanted to do just that moments ago, but you stopped him.”
Ji Xun sneered.
“You wouldn’t,” Yu Cisheng smiled as well. “Think about Ji Yu’s matter. Because of Ji Yu, you fear blades… Is that really true? Think back to when you were hunting down An Jie—how tightly you held the knife in your hand. You fear knives, not entirely because of your sister dying before your eyes, but because when your hand grips the hilt, you catch a glimpse of that dark side of yourself—that side of you that terrifies you immensely yet undeniably exists within you.”
“The side that was first glimpsed by me.”
“Mm… back to the topic. Huo Ranyin’s matter isn’t finished yet,” Yu Cisheng said. “Where were we? We talked about how I indeed wrote the diary, admitting it was a small, immature attempt. But murder—did I really have any need to do that?”
“There is clearly a simpler and more reasonable inference, isn’t there?
The police found no sleeping pills inside the deceased’s body, meaning the deceased died in their natural sleep.
And the cause of death was tightly closed doors and windows with the air conditioner on, coupled with a gas leak that caused death.
So for me to achieve those conditions, I would need to pick a night when Huo Ranyin was driven out of the house, during their sound sleep with doors and windows tightly shut and air conditioner running, so I could quietly sneak in and turn on the gas.
That’s hardly a simple set of conditions, is it? How could I precisely glimpse all of this through the barrier of doors and windows?
Rather than me acting, it’s better to consider…
What if Huo Qiyu came to know the truth one day?
Presumably, she wouldn’t be able to endure it, sinking into utter despair, and thus picked a night when her child was driven out to journey to the yellow springs together with her husband.”
“Then,” Ji Xun asked, “why would she suddenly come to know about it?”
“That question isn’t hard to guess,” Yu Cisheng said.
“Indeed. Perhaps because someone, just like writing a diary to tell Huo Ranyin that he killed his parents, told Huo Qiyu her husband’s true colors,” Ji Xun said softly.
“Then the question returns to this—is revealing the truth an unforgivable mistake?” Yu Cisheng counter-asked. “I think this debate is meaningless. But regarding the diary, I feel I should apologize to you.”
Huo Ranyin lowered his eyes, staring at his hands.
Ji Xun said: “Don’t flatter yourself. This is the truth I promised to find for him; what does it have to do with you?”
“You’re right.” Yu Cisheng didn’t mind. “The chemical reaction produced between you two is still quite marvelous. I believe two people capable of walking toward darkness both ended up walking toward light. In that regard, I’ve also received a broadly educational lesson.”
“You…” He looked at Ji Xun, “…shattered my initial work, into which I had poured the most effort, when I completely didn’t expect it. I took a significant blow back then. I couldn’t understand my failure, yet I indeed failed.”
“Afterward, I saw a brand-new Huo Ranyin.
And I finally discovered that the boundary between good and evil isn’t so distinct.
Evil has its value, and good has its value; handled properly, the two can even convert into one another. Take modern medical achievements—how many were built upon inhumane grey transactions, ultimately benefiting all of humanity?
Good and evil are perhaps inherently one entity.
The reason there is so much evil in the world is that there is inherently so much evil in the world to begin with.
Which is why I dislike my father purely categorizing himself as a philanthropist.
Philanthropists are often just a means for the wealthy to evade taxes—a fake mask, just like his fake, hypocritical self.
I am an investor.
Be it good or evil, I merely hope they yield value beyond expectations.
This can be considered a milestone in my journey from immaturity to maturity.
Just as, regarding saving you two, I feel it carries tremendous value that will create a steady stream of returns for me in the days to come.”
“The diary,” Ji Xun said. “You admitted you wrote the diary. Using a diary to slander someone—that method is very unique.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Was your inspiration for writing the diary drawn from the diary they wrote forty years ago?”
“Should I say ‘as expected of you’? You can even guess a connection like this,” Yu Cisheng praised from the bottom of his heart. “Fine, I admit back then I always liked to tease my father. That diary can be considered a homage to that secretive diary back then.”
“Secretive? That’s not right. You know that was by no means a simple cover-up.”
“…So that’s how it is. So you already know the true reality behind that ship log. I’m a bit curious now—how was that deduced? Objectively speaking, that diary was written quite well. If I hadn’t occasionally overheard my dad’s confessions before the Buddha, I wouldn’t have guessed it either.”
“From details across various aspects.
Back when we were in Qin City, Hu Kun recognized Huo Ranyin at a single glance. Later, I found a photograph of Huo Qiying; Huo Qiying and Huo Ranyin indeed look very alike. Yet such a striking resemblance went completely unrecognized on Mr. Liu’s side.
Mr. Liu is a meticulously detail-oriented man. Why didn’t he recognize him?
Was it because too much time had passed, and he had completely forgotten the indelible Miss Huo who existed in his life and in the diary he wrote?
Also, as an author, I tend to pay extra attention to textual details…
Every crew member’s description of Huo Qiying featured words like ‘dream’ and ‘illusion’. Even if Miss Huo could indeed be the goddess of the whole ship, would every single person’s description of the goddess be identical? Was their mental alignment that highly unified?
Even down to Lin Xiaodao’s diary.
Clearly lacking education and incapable of writing self-pitying prose, he was somehow able to write qiāo gǔ xī suǐ [sucking the marrow from the bones]. Those four characters are far harder to understand and remember than anything before them.
Presumably, someone wrote the first draft and had them re-copy it.
In that entire diary, the only genuine parts were perhaps the event records in the logbook.
Of course, these are all guesses and circumstantial evidence.
The most direct proof was when I called Qin City to ask my colleagues about the bone fragment they obtained—what kind of bone fragment it actually was.
The final answer was… its DNA testing belonged to a male.”
When this sentence resounded, Huo Ranyin still felt an electric tremor, even though he had long known what Ji Xun was going to say.
Ji Xun sighed, yet within that sigh lay a deep sense of relief:
“Huo Qiying was fake.
On that ship, a woman never truly existed.
Those people, out of greed and evil desires, out of power and struggle, raised their butcher blades against their own kind, blood coating the deck and soaking their bodies.
Yet after committing pure evil, they trembled in fear beneath that pure evil.
So, the only cultured man on the ship, Mr. Liu—Liu Yan—came up with an idea to consolidate his position among these people.
He came up with a decision to shift all the evil onto beauty.
Why?
A person seduced by beauty who commits a crime is merely an ordinary person who makes mistakes, not a beast.
They were desperate to escape the beast within themselves, so they fabricated an image to unleash all their beastly nature upon.
But why Miss Huo? I think although Miss Huo never actually boarded the ship, her luggage did. Those people indeed found their initial capital in Miss Huo’s luggage.
Perhaps Miss Huo met with an accident after leaving home… so her luggage was left behind and ended up on the Dingbo.
Based on descriptions from Hu Kun and others who had seen Miss Huo, they jointly concocted a lie, using a fictional character to cleanse themselves of guilt, as if they had shed a heavy moral burden and could set off light-footed again, enjoying life… Just as you said, people are always so adept at shifting responsibility.
When a lie is told long enough, even they themselves come to believe it, immersing themselves in it with great delight.
Hu Kun even spent his entire life immersed in his blue tears—that fictional goddess of beauty that never belonged to him.
As if he could truly save his own low, degraded soul through this.
Regardless, they wrote this story.
This self-deceiving, responsibility-shirking, pathetic, and laughable story where they didn’t even dare to face their true selves.”
“Laughable indeed,” Yu Cisheng agreed with Ji Xun’s words. “When I found out Miss Huo in the story was fake, and the bone fragments in their hands came from the chief mate who was ultimately dismembered by them, this story reached the height of irony. It’s far more absurd than if Miss Huo had actually been on that ship and suffered that fate.”
“Wrong,” Huo Ranyin finally raised his eyes, looking back at Yu Cisheng with a cold sneer. “In this laughable story, the only comforting thing is that at least no woman was truly tortured by them.”
“Old friend, your attitude toward me today really isn’t great,” Yu Cisheng complained. “Does this showdown you two are having with me today really carry any meaning? You are obsessed with the so-called truth of this showdown. Now that I’ve told you everything, even if I guarantee three times that everything I said is true, will you believe it? Compared to believing your mother killed your father, believing I committed innumerable evils and personally disposed of them is much easier to accept, isn’t it?”
“I think,” he said, “at the end of a crime-solving story, there always needs to be a climax connecting the whole text. Just as they needed to fabricate a goddess of beauty forty years ago to bear the evil, you two also want to find a demon to support the landing point of your emotions.”
“Does it really carry no meaning?” Ji Xun asked.
Yu Cisheng looked at Ji Xun.
“You’ve shared so much of your thoughts with us today, dissecting your inner world and your behavioral logic, claiming to be an investor and a capitalist. Do you think that having reached this point, we still don’t know why you destroyed Mr. Liu’s ship?”
“Capitalists invest everywhere, stopping at nothing in pursuit of profit. Did you destroy Mr. Liu’s ship for justice? No, it was because after destroying the stale, corrupt things in your eyes, the interests occupied by those corrupt things would spill over.
So many bosses on that ship met with trouble within a predictable timeframe.
As long as you appropriately shorted those famous, large enterprises that were about to be hit with massive scandals, you could make money hand over fist.”
Brief vulnerability stripped away from Huo Ranyin at this moment.
This body adorned with numerous merits was the sturdiest armor protecting himself and others.
Calmly, he picked up where Ji Xun left off, continuing:
“Before you sent me onto the ship, I had already contacted the Economic Crime Investigation unit. Back then, it was just a precaution in case you crossed the line. It seems my habitual paranoia bought me quite a bit of time.”
Yu Cisheng burst into a helpless laugh: “That really is… something you would do.”
They had talked for so long that a neon hue spilled across the distant horizon of the sea seen through the window.
They had journeyed from the vast, boundless ocean and the night of blood and fire, arriving at the moment of returning to human society.
The confession time inside the lounge had come to an end.
Yu Cisheng saw Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin off the ship.
The sky was still dark, but a tinge of belly-white morning light emerged in the eastern sky; day was about to break.
“Looking forward to our next meeting,” Yu Cisheng said.
“There will be a next time?” Ji Xun asked.
“I think whenever you need grey-market information again,” Yu Cisheng smiled at Huo Ranyin, “you will still think of your old friend.”
“And when Xing Yishan successfully escapes from the sea,” Yu Cisheng turned to Ji Xun, “I will think of you, hoping to meet the author who wrote such a brilliant story at a grand book signing.”
“Though perhaps the next time I see you, it will be in prison,” Ji Xun said sluggishly. “Capitalists stop at nothing in pursuit of profit.
‘When the profit is sufficient, they are even willing to sell the rope that hangs them.’
Your rope will be delivered to us one day, without us even needing to search for it ourselves.”
“Then you had better carefully choose the person who holds that rope,” Yu Cisheng smiled. “Not everyone can hold that rope as purely as you two.”
Yu Cisheng returned to his ship.
Finally, he waved goodbye to Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin.
Under the twilight sky, the ship sailed freely toward the open sea.
“Is it all over?” Ji Xun murmured to himself.
Then, amidst the sound of breaking waves, he heard voices coming from behind—voices of people, sounds of cars, and from afar, what sounded like Tan Mingjiu and Wen Yangyang calling out to them.
He turned his head and saw police cars alongside ambulances that had been waiting here early on, speeding toward them.
Behind all of this, the city began to awaken, reviving the mundane human world.
Huo Ranyin pushed Ji Xun’s wheelchair, walking toward that clamor and bustle.
“I’m so tired,” Ji Xun sighed deeply. When he raised his head and looked at Huo Ranyin, the sigh turned into a smile.
“Take me home quickly, Officer Little Brother.”
