MP Ch25: Night Dreams

[12/01, 05:30, Haijing City]

The sky was just starting to lighten. Yi Shi quickly opened his eyes at the first sound of the alarm. The recent meetings hadn’t run too late, ending around eleven, but he had things on his mind, slept lightly, and kept dreaming, leaving his brain insufficiently rested.

Yi Shi got up slowly, his face pale to transparency, with dark circles under his eyes, like a vengeful spirit from hell. Today marked the beginning of December; the weather was getting colder and the nights longer. At this moment, it was still pitch dark outside; there was no need to even draw the curtains from sleep to wake.

He didn’t turn on the lights, sitting quietly on the bed, looking like an indoor sculpture. He wasn’t spacing out, but trying to recall the specific details of his dreams over the past few hours.

In the latter half of the night, he finally slept deeply, but deeply in the dream. The dream world was bizarre, intertwining several unrelated scenes. Sometimes it was pouring rain, and sometimes the sun was shining brightly. Sometimes he was walking through rugged mountain forests, sometimes bustling city streets. At the end of the dream, a hand was pulling him to run, and behind him was a sky full of flames. He was panting, his chest heaving violently, and his right arm burning with dull pain. Turning his head, he saw it was already torn and charred, the shredded clothes sticking to the wound.

The hand pulling him had healthy skin, a wide palm with clear knuckles, dry and warm, with a layer of calluses on the palm and fingertips, and a long scar at the tiger’s mouth (point between thumb and forefinger), which had already faded to look like a cotton thread. Yi Shi couldn’t see the person’s face, but he recognized the hand. He had seen it in the cafe when he handed over the paper with the code. The other person reached out to take it—the same old scar at the tiger’s mouth.

It was Lin Heyu.

His figure was hidden in the mist; only a tall silhouette could be vaguely seen. To Yi Shi’s surprise, he found himself needing to look up at his back. The hand held was tender and soft, belonging to a child’s body.

“Are you okay?” Lin Heyu asked.

“Ah… um.” Yi Shi’s voice was hoarse and dry, like it had been scorched by fire. Compared to this, the hideous burn scar didn’t hurt at all. He knew this was because the nerve endings in the epidermis and dermis had been destroyed, which also meant that recovery would be very difficult and that it would leave scars that would be hard to remove for a lifetime.

Yi Shi didn’t know where he was. He passively let Lin Heyu lead him forward. The mountain forest was foggy, and the noisy sounds gradually faded away. The scenery changed, surrounded by ancient pines, lush grass, and green bamboo, with tree shadows swaying. A clear stream flowed down from the mountainside, creating a symphony of nature along with the chirping of birds.

Yi Shi looked around. The scenery seemed familiar; he was sure he had been here before. It seemed to be—Southern Cheng’an Mountain?

The two of them followed the stream, and through the layers of branches, a white-walled, blue-tiled ancient building appeared. Xiao Shitou thought it was a temple, but Lin Heyu told him it was an ancestral hall.

“The ancestral hall of Linjia Village has been renovated. The ancestral tablets of generations are kept inside, along with the genealogy. Every clan member, whether direct or collateral, is recorded in it.”

“Are you in it?” Yi Shi asked.

“No. The big clan has many rules. They didn’t like the name my mother gave me, ‘Heyu,’ thinking it suggested insatiable greed and wanted me to change it.”

Yi Shi quickly said, “No, your name has a good meaning.”

“Really?” Lin Heyu walked ahead. Without the cover of fog, his broken back came clearly into view. He covered his mouth and coughed a few times, his steps gradually slowing until he stopped.

“Sorry, I’m afraid… I can’t take you back.”

A wet and sticky feeling spread on the back of Yi Shi’s hand. He looked down and saw bright blood trickling down his hand.

The dream ended here.

Yi Shi rubbed his forehead, his temples throbbing painfully. The scenes in the dream were too real—so real that the fear of being burned by fire still lingered in his heart. He instinctively covered the hideous scar on his right arm, suspecting that it was because of the injury he suffered as a child that he had such dreams in his subconscious.

As for dreaming about Lin Heyu, he was also surprised. Although he didn’t want to admit it, the saying “you dream about what you think about during the day” was true. Recently, he had indeed been too curious and focused on him.

In the next room, the alarm clock rang every five minutes, and it wasn’t until the third ring that Ding Ju groggily turned it off. He squinted at the time displayed on his phone—5:45 AM. The room was pitch dark—so dark that Ding Ju wondered if he was in a single room.

Where was Yi Shi? Wasn’t he up yet? He usually gets up at this time.

Ding Ju propped himself up on his elbow and found the touch button by the bed in the dark. The small night light suddenly turned on, and a solitary figure sat on the opposite bed, backlit, almost scaring Ding Ju off the bed.

“Y-Y-Yi-Yi Shi?” His heart was about to leap out of his mouth, and his teeth felt unsteady.

The slender figure slowly turned his head. Ding Ju became even more terrified; images from the horror movie he had watched outside the interrogation room the other day flooded his mind. He was particularly afraid of seeing a face as smooth as a peeled egg but without any features.

As it turned out, when adrenaline surged, people indeed tended to think wildly and get confused. Yi Shi was still Yi Shi, with a gaze that was shallow and indifferent: “We’re going to be late.”

Whoa! Ding Ju scrambled up, frantically changing clothes. Today’s action required uniform casual clothes, which he hadn’t yet taken out of the wardrobe. Yi Shi, on the other hand, was calmly washing up, dressing, and preparing his things in an orderly manner, getting himself clean and neat.

By the time he filled his cup with water, Ding Ju had finally finished dressing in a flurry, his hair a mess like a bird’s nest. He didn’t even have time to tidy it up. Yi Shi, holding his water cup, couldn’t help but be distracted by the few stray hairs on top of Ding Ju’s head. Ding Ju gave an awkward smile: “It’s just a small thing.”

Yi Shi pointed to his own head, using his eyes to tell him that this small thing looked really silly.

At 6 AM, the members of the Nanyi Criminal Investigation Team One gathered at the hotel entrance. People from Haijing were also there, familiar faces from the meeting the night before, except for Liu Chenyi, who wasn’t there. 

Li Changsheng, biting into a fried dough stick, joked, “Lao Liu from your team didn’t come yesterday and is on strike today too?”

Zhang Rui spread his hands: “Twisted his ankle at the botanical garden. Lao Liu works hard; taking the second team out for team-building isn’t easy. We should sympathize with the old veteran. I even suggested in the car just now to report it as a work injury.”

The members of Team One held back their laughter. Obviously, Zhang Rui was their resident sarcastic expert, not very good at solving cases but number one in sarcasm. Yuan Kang lightly coughed and glared at Zhang Rui, then said to Yu Xue, “Since your Nanyi police team is in charge, the chief commander is handed over to you. We’re all familiar with each other, so if there are any tasks or requests, feel free to let us know.”

Yu Xue smiled lightly, “Captain Yuan has more experience than me. If there are any issues with my arrangements, please guide me.”

Yi Shi stood at the edge of the crowd, drinking soy milk, silent as if it had nothing to do with him. Song Ping moved to his side and asked quietly, “I heard this was your idea?”

“Sort of.”

“Sigh, we all graduated from police school. Why are you so outstanding?” Song Ping sighed. “I always envy people with good brains. People like me who can only follow orders and act with the team feel like we lower the average level.”

Yi Shi bit the straw, not intending to answer. He was the ultimate conversation killer; anything unrelated to the case was over with him.

“Can you at least tell me how the code was deciphered?”

Yi Shi glanced at Song Ping, saw her eagerness for knowledge, and then took out a notebook to write “※∧R”, added a vertical line in the middle, and wrote “Я∧※”, then handed it to Song Ping.

Song Ping’s eyes widened: “It’s reversed? It’s a mirror reflection?”

“Hmm, a mirror.”

Song Ping was puzzled, staring at the note for a long time, still not understanding how it led to the information about 7:30 AM at the Jiade Office Building. Maybe the structure of a genius’s brain was different from that of ordinary people.

In the midst of their conversation, another small car pulled up at the hotel entrance, and two people got out. Although they weren’t in uniform, the toolbox in their hands made it clear that they were from the bomb disposal unit. One was older and the other younger, the younger one looked even younger than Yi Shi, with a buzz cut and a proud, energetic demeanor.

Yuan Kang introduced them, “This is the bomb disposal unit, Lao Zhao, Zhao Peiying; and Xiao Jiang, Jiang Dongliang.”

With these two, all the Haijing people had arrived. There were fewer than twenty people combined from both sides for this operation, but Yu Xue said it was enough and gestured for everyone to find a place to hold a meeting.

In a small, soundproof room, Yu Xue held a pen and a floor plan of the Jiade Office Building. The Jiade Office Building had a total of 20 floors, with 43 registered companies of various types, mostly financial, software engineering, and biotechnology firms. Yesterday, Yuan Kang had already sent people to check everything, finding nothing unusual, so the criminals would likely still try to blend in this morning.

“If he gets into one of the units, how will we know? Should we set up security checks at the entrance?” Zhang Rui asked.

Li Changsheng, chewing on a toothpick, said, “Better not do that. Wouldn’t that just be telling them outright that the police are lying in wait? We’re luring the snake out of its hole!”

“Then we just need to focus on people carrying bags, right?” Song Ping gestured, “Big bags, travel bags, gym bags, and oh, even large bags, as long as they can hold explosives.”

“In that case, dragging a suitcase would work too, since the security there won’t check each one.”

“And what about the hostages? He has to take a hostage up to throw them off the building.”

“Then we should focus on pairs or groups. Stop anyone who looks suspicious.”

Everyone was brainstorming, while Yu Xue remained silent. Yuan Kang then said, “Captain Yu, why don’t you have Yi Shi from your team share his thoughts?”

Yi Shi, who happened to be sitting next to Yu Xue, was reading through a dossier on the hostages. Hearing Yuan Kang mention him, he looked up and asked, “Have you decided who the chosen hostage will be?”

“…?”

Everyone was puzzled. Why did Yi Shi’s words always seem so cryptic? And what did this have to do with the hostages? Could it be that each time Pang Daozi chose his victims, he picked them carefully? He seemed more like a rough, brutal man than the meticulously disguised psychopaths in novels.

Yi Shi spread out the photos of the hostages on the table and asked, “If it were you, who would you choose to kill?”

Everyone leaned in to look at the photos. Pang Daozi had four hostages left, ranging from a young child to an elderly woman. The youngest was an 8-year-old child, and the oldest was a 70-year-old woman, all taken from the exploded machinery factory. Zhang Rui pointed to the child’s photo and said, “Since the USB drive he sent contained children’s songs, and kids don’t have much resistance, the child could be the next target.”

“Didn’t Yi Shi say last time that it wasn’t about adults or children, but a hint about the method?” Song Ping pointed to the worker’s photo, “This guy, according to the data, has a bad temper and probably often clashes with Pang Daozi. If I were taking hostages, I’d leave behind the troublesome ones.”

“The elderly woman then? She’s a burden and needs more care.”

“I think it’s this bespectacled man who looks weak and could pass off as a white-collar worker to blend into the office building.”

All four hostages were pointed out, each with valid reasons. Yi Shi picked up the photos and put them down one by one, “Children have poor self-control and easily panic, exposing themselves; the worker has a bad temper and is big, hard to manage in public; as for the elderly woman, Pang Daozi, being such a violent person, is paradoxically very filial. His mother died not long after Zhao Chenghu was caught, and he didn’t get to see her for the last time. He must feel guilty, so he wouldn’t harm an elderly person now.”

He was left holding the photo of the bespectacled man. Li Changsheng, feeling validated, said proudly, “I told you, pretending to be a white-collar worker is the easiest!”

Yi Shi continued, “Xu Shang is the most likely, but he won’t pretend to be a white-collar worker; it’s unsuitable.”

“…” Li Changsheng covered his face, feeling a mysterious pain but still unwilling to give up, “Why is it unsuitable?”

Yu Xue smiled and said, “He’s been held captive for so many days; he’d be emaciated and wouldn’t pass as an industry elite. He’d be exposed before even getting in the door.”

Song Ping got excited, “Then let’s hurry; what if Xu Shang is already inside?”

“Song Ping, hold on.” Yuan Kang raised his hand, signaling for her to sit down. He didn’t fully agree and said, “Yi Shi, this is just your personal opinion.”

Yi Shi sat down and replied calmly, “Wasn’t that what Captain Yuan asked for, my personal opinion?”

“…” Yuan Kang was left speechless, forced to drink from his water bottle to diffuse the awkward tension.

Yu Xue took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with a cloth, “Then how do you think Xu Shang will be brought inside?”

Yi Shi pressed his index finger against his chin, and everyone in the small room stared at him. The atmosphere was like an eagerly awaited episode of a gripping series, making people wish they could pay to watch ahead.

Yi Shi chewed over the nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty” once more, and after a moment, he looked up, his gaze even more severe, “If I were Pang Daozi, I would first strap Xu Shang with explosives, send him up alone, and at the designated time, he would follow my command and jump off.”

“I would then call the police ahead of time and inform them to watch the show. After Xu Shang jumps, I will detonate the explosives mid-air, preventing him from reaching the ground, creating a scene of blood rain.”

Everyone rubbed their arms, feeling the goosebumps. Today’s high was only in the single digits, but after hearing Yi Shi’s words, the temperature seemed to plummet below zero, giving them an early taste of winter.

Ding Ju swallowed hard, barely daring to breathe. That familiar feeling swept over him again.

His sharp intelligence was real, and so was the fear he invoked. His cold demeanor and indifferent tone made him seem more like a villain than Pang Daozi’s gang.

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