The torrential rain showed no sign of stopping. Yi Shi was drenched, gripping a gun without any bullets, and the chill in his heart was colder than the dampness seeping into his body.
He should have known things wouldn’t be that simple. Time and time again, he refused to submit to fate, only to be played by it over and over.
“Heh, Laogui was afraid I’d lose my temper and slaughter the hostages, so he took the bullets this morning. Didn’t expect it to be a big help…”
Yi Shi’s brows furrowed deeply, and a beast named fury raged inside him, almost impossible to suppress. The atrocities he had witnessed over the past few days, the faces of the wounded and dead children, all surged into his mind at once. He wanted nothing more than to strangle Baldy to death, to send him to the afterlife with his own hands!
“Hey!”
A voice interrupted his rage, which was on the verge of exploding. Yi Shi looked toward the temple and saw a man in a leather jacket lift Xiao Shitou. The man also held a gun, pressing it against the boy’s temple.
“You bitch! Let go of Baldy! Or I’ll kill him!” Clearly, the “Ghost” was no longer around, and the man in the leather jacket had grown bolder.
Xiao Shitou’s eyes widened, and his legs struggled frantically. Yi Shi’s gaze turned cold, his lips pressed into a thin line, as if he had no intention of being coerced by such foolish tactics again.
“Do you think his gun has bullets?” The bald man actually laughed.
Yi Shi’s eyes flickered. He had to admit he couldn’t tell. After all, he was human, not an X-ray machine. Before he got his hands on this gun, he hadn’t even thought it was just a prop strapped to someone’s side.
“Let him go! I-I’ll really shoot!” The man in the leather jacket disabled the safety of his gun, pressing it hard against Xiao Shitou’s right temple. “One shot, and your kid’s head will explode!”
Yi Shi’s expression didn’t change. The hand gripping the bald man’s throat tightened even more. His gaze toward the man in the leather jacket was as if he were looking at a dead man. Baldy coughed, catching on: “Damn, that’s not his kid! Lao San! Get another kid!”
The man in the leather jacket obediently threw Xiao Shitou aside and grabbed the girl next to him.
He picked up Xuanxuan, who had a wound on her head, and pointed the gun directly at the metal flower pinned to her hair. His voice turned more vicious: “If you don’t let him go, I’ll shoot right now!”
Yi Shi stared intently at his right hand, torn between two voices in his mind. Should he gamble or give in? His internal balance slowly tipped toward compromise, because, aside from Lin Erde’s death, the bald man and the man in the leather jacket were still on the run, proving they were both fine. That was an unchangeable fact.
Just as his internal struggle reached its peak, Xiao Shitou struggled to his feet and charged headfirst at the man in the leather jacket. The man staggered, and the gun misfired, grazing Xuanxuan’s ear and hitting the leaky roof.
That shot was real. Blood gushed from the girl’s right ear, and she passed out from the pain. Lin Erde emerged from a dark hole, panicked: “What happened? Why was there gunfire?”
The man in the leather jacket cursed, tossing Xuanxuan to him: “Damn it, almost killed another one!”
From the moment the gun fired, Yi Shi had fallen into a daze. Xuanxuan—Dong Wuxuan—her parents had secretly negotiated with the kidnappers, offering a five-million-ransom to save their daughter. According to the information, she was the child gravely injured and still in intensive care, her wounds severely infected, leading to sepsis. She had yet to escape danger.
Yi Shi had always thought it was the injury from the cochlear implant that caused all this. He never imagined it was due to a momentary lapse in his judgment.
Yet another irreversible fact created by his own hands. He felt like a fish thrown onto the shore, suffocated by a growing sense of helplessness.
Is this really the only way? Is compromise the best choice—to stand by and quietly watch everything unfold?
But—he wasn’t ready to give up.
Yi Shi closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, a bold idea emerged. If his presence made the case progress more smoothly and tightly, what would happen if he left?
After all, things couldn’t get any worse than they already were.
The decision was made in an instant. Yi Shi released Baldy, dashed into the pine forest through the rain. The bald man cursed angrily, while the man in the leather jacket chased after him, firing wildly. But his aim was poor, and with the rain and unfamiliar terrain working against him, he soon gave up and slunk back to the temple.
The rain-soaked night was pitch-black, barely allowing Yi Shi to see anything. He ran purely on his sense of direction, ripping off his cumbersome wig and heavy coat. He had no idea how long he ran. There were only trees, endless trees. Exhausted, his pace slowed until he had to lean on one tree after another to continue.
Finally, the view ahead opened up. No longer hemmed in by towering pines, Yi Shi took a deep breath, preparing to move forward. Unexpectedly, his foot slipped—the ground ahead was a steep drop. He fell forward, reaching out for a tree to steady himself, but it was too late. His fingertips brushed rough bark, but he caught nothing.
…No, he did catch something.
A broad hand firmly grabbed his wrist, easily pulling him up. Yi Shi collapsed into a warm embrace.
“Be careful.”
Yi Shi shivered, feeling disbelief yet knowing it was real.
All the tension in him melted away at that moment. His hands limply wrapped around the other’s back, and he closed his eyes, too tired to open them again.
Amid the overwhelming confusion and exhaustion, a ray of light finally broke through.
———
[12/13, 19:11, Haijing City, Southern Cheng’an Mountain]
“Squeak—”
The faded red door creaked open. A boy hiding from the rain was adding firewood to the flames when he heard the noise and quickly stood up.
Through the half-open door came a tall figure, drenched from head to toe, just like him, caught in the sudden downpour. The man crossed the courtyard, step by step, approaching the main hall. Only then did the boy realize it wasn’t just one person—there was someone on his back.
“Mind if we take shelter from the rain for a while?”
The man didn’t seem to be seeking permission; it was more like a statement of fact. The boy quietly moved to the other side, making space near the fire for them by giving up the dry haystack he had been using.
The man nodded and smiled at him, then carefully set down the person he had been carrying. Seeing the pale, tightly shut face of that person, the boy stood up in surprise: “…Is it her?!”
“Yeah.”
“What happened to her?” the boy asked cautiously. Just two hours earlier, this woman had swiftly subdued the burly bald man, but now she rested quietly in the man’s arms, looking pale and fragile, like a withering flower on the verge of fading.
“She’s tired, just resting for a while.” The man glanced towards the inner courtyard. “Have you been back there?”
The boy shook his head. This was the old ancestral hall of Linjia Village. If it weren’t for the rain, he would never have come here in his life, let alone wander around.
He wasn’t born in Linjia Village and felt no reverence for the ancestral hall. When he first came in, shivering from the cold, he saw the old altar table teetering on the verge of collapse. He walked over, kicked it apart into various pieces, laid some hay on one piece to sit, and used the rest to fuel the fire.
“I’ll take him to the back.” The man scooped up the sleeping beauty, seemingly seeing through the boy’s thoughts and laughing, “No need to hold such a grudge against Linjia Village. Whether you’re included in the family registry or not, it won’t affect your life.”
The boy was stunned. “How do you know?”
“Because my surname is Lin.”
The vast meeting hall felt empty and desolate. The boy sat with his arms crossed, staring blankly at the flickering flames. A moment later, the man returned, now dressed in dry clothes: a shirt and jeans. He had brought back his wet clothes, which were still dripping, and laid them by the fire to dry.
The boy glanced at him from the corner of his eye. He was a stranger; he hadn’t seen him during his time in Linjia Village. The boy hadn’t noticed him carrying anything when he entered earlier, so where did the dry clothes come from?
He’s a mysterious man.
Time passed, and the rain outside gradually eased. The boy, overcome by drowsiness, curled up in the haystack and dozed off. In his groggy state, he saw the man walk out through the double doors and leave the old ancestral hall.
Time flowed silently with the deepening night. The fire, which had burned all night, now emitted only a faint glow. The boy woke groggily, sat up, and glanced around. The rain had stopped, the sky was dimly lit, but heavy clouds still loomed.
He looked around. The man hadn’t returned yet, so he decided to explore the back courtyard, pushing open door after door. The old ancestral hall had been abandoned for years, and each room opened to a faceful of dust and the smell of mold. Finally, when he opened the third-to-last door, a faint, distant scent of sandalwood wafted out, along with the sight of a smooth, pale back. The person’s thin shoulders curved sharply into their back.
The boy’s ears turned red in an instant, and he hurriedly turned around to avoid looking. “Sorry… sorry!”
Yi Shi, who was still putting his arms into the sleeves of his t-shirt, had assumed it was Lin Heyu entering. When he turned around, he was surprised to see the familiar figure with his back to him.
“Is it you?”
The boy nodded, stammering: “You… you finish changing first; I’m leaving!”
Yi Shi was baffled. They were both men—what was there to avoid when changing clothes?
The boy sat obediently in the meeting hall, his heart still pounding, thumping loudly in his chest. He blamed his flustered state on inadvertently offending a woman, but when Yi Shi finally emerged, he was left completely dumbfounded.
“What’s wrong?” Yi Shi rubbed the right side of his face. “Is there something there?”
The boy shook his head dumbly, his eyes focused on Yi Shi’s flat chest. “…You’re a guy?”
“Yeah, that was just for a special situation earlier.” Yi Shi glanced at the women’s clothing hanging nearby, still damp from drying by the fire. He had no intention of putting it back on.
The boy stole a glance at him out of the corner of his eye. Though Yi Shi wore only a simple white shirt and black pants, it looked undeniably stylish on him. Clothing usually makes the man, but in this case, the man’s charisma elevated the clothes.
So, he really was a man. No wonder he had felt something was off when he saw him again last night—his brown long hair had turned into short black hair, and the heroic woman had transformed into a tall man.
“Where’s he?”
“He went out and hasn’t come back yet.” The boy fished a few pine nuts out of his pocket and offered them to Yi Shi. “Are you hungry? Want some?”
Seeing the pine nuts reminded Yi Shi that he had made the boy climb a tree for no reason. Smiling apologetically, he said, “It was a tense situation at the time, and I acted on instinct. I’ll make it up to you by picking a basket of them next time.”
“No need. But what’s the deal with those kids that suddenly appeared?”
Yi Shi’s brow furrowed slightly. He didn’t want to explain the details, as the more someone knew, the more likely they’d get dragged into it. His sudden attack on the bald man last night had been an effort to get the boy to leave quickly. He hadn’t expected to run into him again this morning.
Fortunately, the boy wasn’t the nosy type. He was quiet, and since Yi Shi didn’t want to talk, the boy didn’t press him further.
The morning in the deep mountains was cold and damp. After a night of heavy rain, the mountain was shrouded in mist. Compared to the bustling city, this place was desolate and bleak. The evergreen leaves were coated in white frost, a green so deep it felt melancholy and worn.
The fire had not yet gone out, and Yi Shi grabbed some dry grass to stoke it with a few more logs. As he stirred the embers, the flames gradually grew stronger.
He wore a long-sleeved t-shirt; the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing a large scar on his right arm. A series of twisted, flesh-colored lines snaked across his porcelain skin, like centipedes, marring what could have been a work of art.
Yi Shi noticed the boy staring and casually asked, “Does it scare you?”
The boy shook his head, his dark eyes brimming with curiosity. Without looking back, Yi Shi slowly explained, “A fire. Got burned. Had it since I was little. It’s too serious to remove.”
“Did it hurt a lot?”
“It’s been too long. I don’t remember. Maybe it did back then.” Yi Shi glanced at his right arm. “Doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t stop me from doing anything.”
“Hmm… I see.” The boy lowered his head, muttering, “You’re really strong.”
With his head bowed like that, his features blurred slightly in the wavering air above the fire. Yi Shi always felt a sense of déjà vu when he saw him, as if they had met before. He leaned in, trying to get a clearer look at the boy’s face. His black eyes locked onto the boy, but Yi Shi didn’t realize that this movement had made the boy’s heart race.
He had never seen such a beautiful person. At first, he had mistaken his gender, but even without the wig, there was no sense of discord. Yi Shi’s features were so exquisite that they transcended gender, and even the horrifying scars on his arm seemed to enhance his unique beauty…
The creaky, worn red door groaned open again, and both of them looked up. Lin Heyu had finally returned.
Amazingly, he was carrying breakfast in his hand. The logo on the bag was familiar—it was from the steamed bun shop near the entrance of Linjia Village. The boy quickly calculated the time it would take to go to and from Linjia Village, and it matched up with Lin Heyu’s late-night departure.
Yi Shi had already stood up and quickly walked over. Lin Heyu reached out and touched a handful of soft black hair. “Looks like you slept well. You seem much more refreshed.”
Yi Shi instinctively grabbed his hand. “Why are you here?”
“I knew you were here, so I came.” Lin Heyu held the cold fingertips in his palm. “Why are you wearing so little? There’s a jacket in the clothes I prepared for you.”
There was a jacket lying on the table next to the T-shirt. It’s just that Yi Shi didn’t feel cold and didn’t want to wear it. When he woke up, he found himself curled up in a sleeping bag. The sleeping bag was down-filled and very warm, finally giving him a quiet and comfortable night after many days of exhaustion.
Undoubtedly, it was Lin Heyu who had helped him change out of his soaked clothes. Yi Shi’s earlobes visibly turned red.
Lin Heyu calmly took Yi Shi by the hand and led him back to the council hall, opening the bag with breakfast inside. “Eat something first.” The young man across from him sat down obediently, and his stomach let out a protest. Lin Heyu handed over a still-warm meat bun. “Why haven’t you gone back? Isn’t today a weekend?”
The young man took a bite of the bun and replied sullenly, “I don’t want to go back.”
“Studying is your duty. Besides, if you don’t go back after a night away, your mom will worry.”
Maybe it was because he felt he owed something after accepting the food, the young man reluctantly stood up, patting the dust off his pants. “Then I’ll go.”
“Mm, be careful going down the mountain. Also, from last night until now, don’t mention anything you saw to anyone.”
Yi Shi tugged at Lin Heyu’s sleeve and whispered, “About Captain Yu…”
“He knows you’re safe,” Lin Heyu lightly patted his head. “Eat your meal and stop overthinking.”
Why does this feel like he’s soothing a child?
Yi Shi kind of wanted to push his hand away but didn’t.
———
[12/14, 08:21, Cheng’an Mountain, Haijing City]
Only two people remained in the old ancestral temple.
Yi Shi had just been forced to eat the most filling breakfast of his life. When Lin Heyu returned from the courtyard, he held the jacket that had been left on the table and draped it over Yi Shi’s shoulders.
Yi Shi kept his head down the whole time. His long, thick eyelashes not only covered his eyes but also concealed his emotions. Lin Heyu folded the dried clothes one by one. When he reached the women’s clothes, he chuckled, “I guessed right, they look good on you.”
“……”
“Are you planning to wear them again?”
Yi Shi immediately shook his head. Lin Heyu neatly folded them and put them into the bag. “You should keep them, just in case.”
Probably not, Yi Shi thought, remembering those kids. If his guess was correct, they should still be in Xiao Ci Temple, still in this world.
Before all this, he would never have imagined that they had come here by his own hand.
“Are you thinking about the hostages?” Lin Heyu said softly. “For now, they’re safe. Until the first batch is found, no more hostages will die.”
“Since you’ve left, don’t overthink it. Just let things develop as they should. I believe you’ve realized that every action you’ve taken hasn’t prevented anything—it’s only pushed the story forward.”
Yi Shi raised his head. “…What if I had done nothing from the beginning?”
“You wouldn’t do nothing.” Lin Heyu approached, bent down, and cupped Yi Shi’s face, locking eyes with him, his gaze deep and unwavering like black gemstones. “You’re Yi Shi. No matter how many choices you’re given, you’ll always try to make a new change. But… this is a predetermined outcome. No matter what you do, it will only lead in one direction.”
As expected, any change he wanted to make was in vain.
Upon reflection, when he tried to change the choice of the first hostage, Tu Laogui took Gu Lang away; when he tried to subdue the criminals, the short man died unexpectedly, forcing them to change locations; when he gambled on the gun in the leather jacket guy’s hand, it resulted in Xuanxuan’s sepsis.
He had memorized the investigation details by heart, knew every step of the case, and precisely because of this, every change he made only led back to the same corresponding conclusion. It was like rivers starting from the snowy mountains, flowing across the land, and inevitably converging into the vast sea.
That sense of helplessness swept over him again. Yi Shi smiled wearily, “But I still don’t want to give up. What should I do?”
Lin Heyu tightened his arm and pulled him into his embrace. His lips brushed against Yi Shi’s smooth forehead, his voice low and gentle. “You don’t need to ask me, because I haven’t given up either. There will be a breaking point. It will be found.”
Yi Shi froze, sensing something different in those words. The person in front of him was indeed Lin Heyu, but there was a strange yet familiar feeling in their interaction. He no longer had the energy to dwell on these questions. The person was right in front of him, so he might as well ask directly.
“Aren’t you solving a case? Why are you here? How did you get here?”
“I already told you.”
“You knew what I would encounter in advance, so you came here and prepared everything I needed,” Yi Shi said, his face half-buried in the warm embrace, his voice muffled. “But under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t have known. My whereabouts in the entire kidnapping case aren’t in any records.”
“Mm, I do know a bit too much,” Lin Heyu said as his long fingers combed through the scattered black hair in his arms. “And as expected, you’ve remembered me.”
Yi Shi was stunned, his thoughts pulling back to that rainy night when they first met. The same torrential rain, his appearance just as coincidental, and his timely assistance, like a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds.
“…It was you?” Yi Shi pulled away from him, eyes filled with shock, confusion, and disbelief.
He finally understood where that strange feeling came from. The unfamiliar part was that this wasn’t the Lin Heyu he had been interacting with; the familiar part was that, on their first meeting, it had always been him.
There were two Lin Heyu’s, and this one, no matter how you looked at it, seemed to be from an unknown future. Yi Shi grabbed his wrist, the questions written clearly in his eyes.
“I believe you’ve noticed too. Ever since you accidentally got involved in the ‘1.21 Kidnapping Case,’ the case here couldn’t be established. The two worlds we are in are complementary, and essentially, what connects them is the same case from beginning to end.”
His accidental involvement would cause the case in this world to no longer stand. But what about Lin Heyu? He had already come into contact with Pang Daozi and the others and knew they were planning to target Nanyi Machinery Factory. Would he, like Yi Shi, also accidentally get involved in the ‘10.30 Explosion Case’?
“What about you? Since you can appear before me safe and sound, does that mean nothing will happen to you?”
Lin Heyu gazed intently at Yi Shi and affectionately pinched his cheek. “…The time I have complete memory of is from before the case happened. Every Lin Heyu is the same; they will gradually forget. So I tried to find you. But when we met at Turtle Back Mountain that day, you had no memory. Then I suddenly understood: The periods we retain memories are opposite.”
Yi Shi thought carefully, slowly piecing together a thread of logic from the layers of fog. “Our memory retention periods are different, so I also tried to find and get to know you during the period when your memory was blank. That’s why, when we met at the cemetery, you had an impression of me?”
Admiration flickered in Lin Heyu’s eyes. He liked Yi Shi’s sharp mind, and communicating with him was always effortless.
“Why are we… like this?” Yi Shi couldn’t understand. The bizarre scenario, something others wouldn’t even dare to dream of, was happening to him in reality.
Lin Heyu wasn’t sure either. He suspected that something went wrong with a certain part of the case, which led to the split between the two worlds. He couldn’t help but smile bitterly. “You ask me if I’ll be safe and how my story will end, but don’t you already know?”
Yi Shi felt a throbbing pain in his temples. Lin Heyu disappeared without a trace, evaporating from the world for twenty years, leaving only a tombstone with his last name.
There was no trace of him in any of the files about the explosion case from start to finish. The two of them, clearly people who were nowhere to be found, were nevertheless continuously driving the case forward—how tragic and absurd.
A warm hand gently stroked Yi Shi’s head. Lin Heyu sighed. “You don’t need to worry. Our meeting is also a predetermined fact. No matter what unexpected events happen, it won’t change anything. At most, everything will return to the starting point. I’ll find you again, and you’ll get to know me again.”
Memory reset, meeting each other again, encountering the same series of cases, and walking once more through the experiences the other had already lived.
In a daze, Yi Shi seemed to understand the situation he and Lin Heyu were in. As unbelievable as it was, the bloody truth was unfolding in an orderly fashion.
“Are we destined to only be this kind of friend?” Yi Shi asked softly.
Lin Heyu moved closer and pressed a light kiss to his forehead. “If we could break the chains of fate, I wouldn’t want to just be friends with you.”
