The next morning, the police officer stationed outside the ward noticed that Mr. Yan had slept late. For once in his life, Yan Xiaodao had not gotten up at five-thirty to take a cold shower.
The young officer turned the locked door handle and began knocking with some impatience. After a slow series of footsteps, Yan Xiaodao appeared bare-chested, slippers dragging, a razor in one hand as he poked his head out.
The young officer trusted Mr. Yan, but still responsibly swept a quick glance around the room to check for accidents or anything unusual. Yan Xiaodao walked to the window and used the faint reflection in the glass to shave his chin, a lazy smile resting at his lips… Mr. Ling was asleep on his bed.
Ling He lay face-down in the pillow, sleeping like an unconscious pig, one shoulder sticking out above the blanket and half a calf showing below. In the eyes of a police officer, the whole scene was simply spectacular…
Yan Xiaodao glanced back and smiled easily at the young officer, then casually tucked the blanket more securely around Ling He.
The young officer’s face became a collage of emotions too complicated to describe. He pivoted sharply on his heel in a textbook about-face and marched out without saying a word.
Ling He had genuinely exhausted himself this time. After six rounds and nothing left to squeeze out, he had collapsed into dead sleep on Yan Xiaodao’s bed. Yan Xiaodao had barely shaved half his face before he could no longer stop staring. He sat on the edge of the bed and quietly lifted Ling He’s tangled long hair, admiring the ridiculous sight of half his face buried in the pillow, his breathing puffing strands of hair up and down. With that innocent, harmless expression, he was surprisingly lovable.
Yan Xiaodao dabbed a little shaving cream from his own face and smeared it onto Ling He’s forehead and nose.
As expected, he woke him up.
Ling He stared sleepily at him. Under Yan Xiaodao’s affectionate gaze, his eyes slowly came into focus until he finally realized someone had painted his face with white foam. He did not even have enough energy left to fight or kick and could not be bothered to move. He simply ordered Yan Xiaodao, “Lick it clean.”
Yan Xiaodao looked particularly handsome bare-chested. He shaved the final traces of foam from his chin, the blade moving along the distinctly masculine line of his Adam’s apple.
The sight was enough to make time itself linger in that corner of the room. Half awake, Ling He’s breath caught. He was bewitched by the man in front of him too…
“I want that too,” Ling He murmured, almost entranced, wanting Xiaodao.
Yan Xiaodao obediently settled Mr. Ling comfortably against the headboard. He wiped his face, spread shaving cream, gently touched along his neck and chest, then slowly shaved away the white foam.
……
……
Life in the hospital during recuperation was peaceful and comfortable enough to make both of them loosen their vigilance and temporarily forget the currents surging outside.
Only the routine summer evening showers over Linwan Harbor reminded the city that clouds still hung overhead. A series of seemingly trivial developments arrived one after another, droplets gathering into a current, like an invisible hand behind the curtain overturning familiar assumptions and quietly changing the fate of many people.
In the middle of his busy work on the case, Xue Qian called Yan Xiaodao. “Mr. Yan, we found a body floating near the bay.”
Yan Xiaodao was playing cards in his room with the officer and a patient from the neighboring ward. Holding the phone to his ear, his good mood vanished at once. “…Captain Xue, are you asking me to identify it?”
Xue Qian said, “We do need you to provide DNA material for Qi Baoshan. You’d better come in person too. I’ll send a car to pick you up.”
Master Qi’s whereabouts had remained like a great stone pressing on Yan Xiaodao’s heart. No one had seen him alive or dead. He had simply vanished without a trace, and anyone would find that impossible to accept. Yet Yan Xiaodao’s feelings were painfully contradictory. So long as no body was found, there was still hope that he remained alive. If they ever did find him, it would either be as a cold, decayed, incomplete corpse soaked by the sea or as a wanted criminal whose crimes had only grown heavier before capture…
A police car brought Mr. Yan from the hospital to headquarters. Yan Xiaodao knew the place well enough by now and was once again escorted to the morgue and forensic examination room. He had been here before, when he helped Bureau Chief Bao examine Mr. Mai’s body.
Xue Qian, fully equipped with mask and gloves, pulled open the refrigerated drawer for Yan Xiaodao. Cold white vapor rolled out as he warned him, “It’s badly decomposed. Prepare yourself.”
Yan Xiaodao looked only twice at the rotten body beneath the covering cloth. He did not need a third look. “That isn’t my godfather.”
The corpse’s face had been completely destroyed, apparently deliberately cut away with a blade. The result was horrifying and clearly intended to conceal the dead man’s identity. The police could not immediately search the databases using facial features and had to work through recent missing-person reports one by one.
But the corpse was not Qi Baoshan.
Yan Xiaodao said, “Master Qi was definitely left-handed. His left hand had old calluses from using knives and doing rough work, but this man’s left hand doesn’t have that hardened skin. The position and direction of the blood vessels in the neck are wrong too, and the muscle density doesn’t look right. It isn’t him.”
Xue Qian agreed. “Another round of DNA testing will formally exclude him. But now we have a different problem. Who is this dead man? His face was destroyed and his body dumped in the sea. Someone was clearly trying to erase his identity.”
Both men looked toward the corpse’s right hand at the same time.
The unfortunate dead man had not only lost his face. The thumb, index finger, and middle finger of his right hand had also been cut off. Whether by accident or design was unknown.
“Removing any part of a body can be a way to conceal the dead person’s identity,” Xue Qian said.
“So there may have been some identifying mark on the right hand?” Yan Xiaodao said.
“What do you have on your right hand, Mr. Yan?” Xue Qian asked.
“Calluses from practicing with a blade and gripping one, plus these old cuts.” Yan Xiaodao turned his right hand back and forth, then suddenly changed direction. “Captain Xue, what do you have on the fingers of your right hand?”
Xue Qian held out his thumb, index finger, and middle finger. “Gun calluses. I practice shooting at least four times a week.”
Their eyes met at the same moment. Gun calluses.
A sniper with a police or military background would carry persistent shooting calluses on those fingers, markers of a specialized identity.
The police had questioned Gu Yaoting too. Young Master Gu examined the photographs of the corpse without any ordinary person’s fear of death or horror at what he saw. He merely gave the rotten body a savage smile and said that it looked uglier than he ever would when he died, and that however he died now, this trip had already been worth it.
Xue Qian shook his head with a sigh. “If this man turns out to be the sniper we’ve been looking for, I won’t be surprised at all. Those who commit one injustice after another bring about their own destruction. A man who chose the wrong side and helped a tiger do evil was bound to be discarded once he stopped being useful and left to rot in the wilderness.”
……
Once it was confirmed that the floating corpse was not the missing Qi Baoshan, Yan Xiaodao relaxed slightly, though his emotions remained complicated.
He casually said, “Captain Xue, my injuries were healed a while ago. I don’t want to make things difficult for you and the Bureau Chief. I can go into detention.”
“Mr. Yan, don’t hurry into a holding cell yet. There’s something else I need you to help identify.” Xue Qian raised his eyes and studied Yan Xiaodao. Once he started looking, he did not stop. His sharp, reflective gaze traveled from head to foot, then from legs back to face, examining him as if peeling away layers of skin.
Being stared at like that by another grown man was deeply uncomfortable, especially since Yan Xiaodao knew perfectly well that Captain Xue was gay and liked men. Xue Qian became absorbed, tilting his head slightly as he muttered to himself, “…Still doesn’t look quite right.”
Yan Xiaodao frowned warily. “What?”
Xue Qian: “…”
Yan Xiaodao coughed awkwardly. “Why are you staring at me?”
Xue Qian: “…Fuck, I’m not attracted to you. Don’t get ideas.”
Yan Xiaodao cursed silently, Fuck. Thanks so much, asshole.
Xue Qian did not seem capable of embarrassment in the first place. He stopped Yan Xiaodao from leaving. “Don’t go yet. Eat a working lunch in our cafeteria. The Bureau Chief says he’ll reimburse you. This afternoon, the Bureau Chief and several people from the special task force need to speak with you in detail.”
“…What exactly is going on? Does this case have something to do with me?” From that moment onward, Yan Xiaodao felt his thoughts begin to sink without limit. Something was wrong. It was like a dark block of iron dropped into the sea, unable to resist its own terrible weight, sinking and sinking until it hit the bottom.
“Don’t worry. You’re not a suspect,” Xue Qian said stiffly, attempting reassurance.
Xue Qian kept his mouth tightly shut rather than say what he could not bear to voice: Mr. Yan, if you were also one of the victims back then, what would you think?
……
At that exact moment, the screech of hard braking swept past the windows downstairs, loud enough to be heard from well above. At the gate of the police compound, a graceful figure flashed out of the driver’s seat. Ling He, carrying an insulated lunchbox, came searching all the way up.
Ling He found Yan Xiaodao upstairs, his hairline faintly damp from haste and anxiety. “Xiaodao, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. What’s wrong with all of you?” Yan Xiaodao forced himself to look relaxed.
Ling He had gone to the hospital to deliver food and heard that Mr. Yan had been “invited” to headquarters to “identify a body.” Immediately he felt something was strange and deliberate about it. Identify what body? A few photographs would have been enough. Why send a police car specifically to bring Yan Xiaodao in person for a conversation?
Sitting in the police cafeteria in front of the special home-cooked meal Mr. Ling had brought, Yan Xiaodao had no appetite whatsoever. His mind felt like a bundle of burning threads knotted into chaos. Uniformed officers walked past carrying trays. Some seemed to recognize him and Ling He and kept glancing over. Every look seemed to contain some hidden meaning, as though everyone knew some truth except the person trapped at the center of the whirlpool.
Ling He, on the other hand, appeared completely at ease. He buried himself in the cafeteria meal and ate with great appetite. Being able to enjoy food anywhere was, after all, one of his virtues.
After lunch, that afternoon, Yan Xiaodao sat across a large conference table from several leaders of the special task force.
Strictly speaking, Ling He had no right to attend the meeting, but Bureau Chief Bao allowed him to sit in a chair by the wall and listen.
The newest evidence had come from Liang Tong after his surrender.
On the day Chairman Liang was nearly killed by the bombing, the assassination attempt frightened him out of his wits. Even while fire-engine sirens howled through the streets, he had sat blankly by the roadside, unable to believe that after everything he had done he would still end up as a discarded hunting dog. If that was not the moment to abandon the darkness and step into the light, then when would be?
When Liang Tong finally saw Captain Xue, he reacted as though he had found family. Taking the opening offered to him, he surrendered readily to Captain Xue.
They could have become family in another sense too. Liang Tong had once considered himself superior and looked down on a mere criminal-investigation captain. Now the Liang family had collapsed and lost its patrons, his own future imprisonment all but guaranteed. If his son could gain the protection of a criminal-investigation captain, Liang Tong would consider that a blessing for the family.
Bureau Chief Bao opened one of the numerous thick evidence folders layered across the conference table and took out a large transparent evidence bag. Inside sat an exquisitely made rectangular box, another antique lacquer box decorated with delicate filigree and mother-of-pearl inlay.
Yan Xiaodao recognized it immediately. “The ‘Golden Brick’ box Boss Jian turned over?”
“Similar, but not that one,” Bao Zhengwei said. “This is another box.”
Yan Xiaodao’s heart tightened sharply.
Bao Zhengwei confirmed his suspicion. “When Jian Mingxun confessed that he had kept only half the materials from the ‘Golden Brick Codex,’ he was telling the truth. Liang Tong had the other half. This box was handed over after Liang Tong surrendered to us. It contains the other half of the ‘Golden Brick.’”
Yan Xiaodao quickly glanced at Ling He sitting by the wall, an instinctive search for reassurance.
Ling He was some distance away. His gaze was blank and drifting. Clearly he did not know what the box contained either and had never seen it.
Wearing transparent gloves, Bao Zhengwei took the stack of photocopied profiles from the box and spread them all across the conference table from left to right, displaying them to everyone like a long scroll painting from some ancient dynasty.
As expected, the second half of the Golden Brick Codex contained six more registered youths, each different in appearance and identity, all with handsome, youthful, innocent faces.
The Twelve Young Masters of Yandu were finally complete.
Everyone silently examined the files from left to right. At last every gaze settled on the final photograph in the register.
Who was he?
Then every gaze slowly left the photograph and shifted toward Yan Xiaodao.
Yan Xiaodao remained seated without moving. He did not stand up and lean over the table to inspect the faces. He felt there was no need. It simply could not be possible.
The other person who remained seated was Captain Xue. Xue Qian had already studied the material thoroughly over the past several days, digging through records from fifteen years ago and filling his mind with comparisons between childhood and adult faces. He did not need to look again.
Ling He could no longer sit still. He strode into the cluster around the table and bent his entire upper body over the documents, staring at the photographs and rapidly reading whatever text might reveal their identities.
Ling He’s lips moved faintly. He looked at Xiaodao with deep suspicion. It truly was beyond anyone’s expectations.
Yan Xiaodao hated the atmosphere. He wanted to stand up and leave. He would have preferred the days when he entered this building as a suspect, sat across from Captain Xue for questioning, and insolently spat out a bloodied cigarette butt. Even that sharp, confrontational simplicity had been better than today’s slow blade grinding through flesh, his heart like drifting fibers that could shatter from a single touch and scatter into ash.
Everyone sat down again in silence.
Ling He, usually so sharp-tongued and determined to make his presence known, said nothing at all now. He too seemed lost in a daze.
Bureau Chief Bao cleared his throat. Today he had apparently decided to be the man carrying the explosive charge that would blast open the cruel truth. In a serious, formal tone, he said slowly, “We’ve already verified the identities of most of the victims. For convenience, we’ve labeled them from Number One through Number Twelve. At present, the only identity still in question is the final one. According to Liang Tong, the six in this second half of the file actually entered the network earlier and were somewhat older. He never met Number Twelve and was not the person who arranged for him to be brought in. We questioned Jian Mingxun again as well. Jian never handled Number Twelve and does not know him.
“If neither Liang Tong nor Jian Mingxun handled the arrangement, then based on our analysis, the most likely explanation is that Number Twelve had a background similar to Mai Yunliang’s. His own family may have been directly responsible for placing him into that hidden circle, without using outside businessmen as intermediaries. That would explain why outsiders never learned his family identity.”
“When this case is eventually closed, we need to determine what happened to every victim, whether each survived or died and whether each was rescued. That will affect sentencing and the legal characterization of the case. So the remaining question is Number Twelve.” Bao Zhengwei paused after saying this and watched Yan Xiaodao’s reaction before continuing. “Our clues come from the name registered for Number Twelve, his birth date, and several childhood photographs. Perhaps this is an extreme coincidence. The boy listed as Number Twelve had the surname Han. His name was Han Xiao. His date of birth was July 9, 1988. That is all the information we currently have.”
Yan Xiaodao slowly closed his eyes against the sharp, chaotic glare of everything in front of him.
At last he understood why Bureau Chief Bao and Captain Xue had been watching him.
The boy had the same given name, and the date on Yan Xiaodao’s own identification card and household registration was July 9, 1988.
Was that really a fucking coincidence?
“But…” Captain Xue took over the burden of detonating the truth and let the Bureau Chief drink some tea. “Mr. Yan, we’ve looked into your general background too. You were effectively an orphan. Your adoptive mother, Madam Yan, found you by chance and raised you. She isn’t your biological mother, and Qi Baoshan wasn’t your biological father either. If neither of them knew your birth parents, then where did the name and birth date on your household registration come from? When Madam Yan found you by the roadside, did you have a tag around your neck with your date of birth written on it?”
“No.” Yan Xiaodao denied it automatically, numb. The words “birth parents” sounded especially hateful to him now.
“So it’s just coincidence?… Number Twelve isn’t you?” Xue Qian asked.
“It isn’t a coincidence.” Yan Xiaodao’s lips moved slightly. “Give me a cigarette.”
Several of the leaders reached into their pockets at the same time and offered him cigarettes. Multiple hands extended toward him. No one rushed him to answer. Everyone understood that the man before them was being dragged through a storm almost strong enough to swallow him.
Relying only on childhood photographs had not been enough. Bureau Chief Bao and Captain Xue had privately studied them for several days and even consulted police facial-comparison specialists, but nobody could confirm the match. Several facial features were similar, but others did not align perfectly.
The truth was that Yan Xiaodao had changed enormously over the years. His face and build differed too much from his adolescence for someone who did not already know the answer to easily imagine they were the same person. Even Liang Tong, who had kept this half of the archive, had failed to connect the adult man with the boy.
Just as Madam Yan had once said: Son, you were such a beautiful boy when you were little. Much prettier than you are now. You must have come from some grand and distinguished family. Your parents must have been people of noble background.
Even a country woman like Madam Yan knew how to judge a person by his face. She had seen it.
And so Yan Xiaodao had been raised “crooked” by his adoptive mother and godfather, becoming less conventionally beautiful as he grew older. The path of life, completely redirected by fate, had torn away the fragile and luxurious shell left by his birth family, torn away the marks of his origins, and exposed the resilient flesh beneath. The temperament and appearance of the grown man became completely different from those of the boy.
He was no longer as delicate and pretty as he had been as a child. In its place had grown the mature masculinity of an adult man, hands covered in calluses from blade practice and a body built with lean muscle. A man like Yan Xiaodao could hardly be described with the shallow word “pretty,” but the magnetism remained.
Xue Qian proposed, “We do need to understand the exact circumstances of how you were taken in. We may need to ask your adoptive mother, Madam Yan, to come speak with us and collect some childhood photographs. Of course, we can avoid telling her the actual details of the case and ask only about the adoption.”
“No. Don’t talk to my mother. There’s no need. I don’t want her to know any of this.
“And there’s no need to look for photographs. The old house was forcibly demolished. The few childhood photos I had were buried in the rubble. Nothing remains.”
Yan Xiaodao’s face disappeared behind the smoke rising from his cigarette as he flatly rejected Captain Xue’s suggestion.
Yan Xiaodao smoked one cigarette after another.
Nicotine smoke drifted through the conference room, turning everyone indistinct. Ling He’s face looked faintly pale and his breathing strained, but he did not leave. His consciousness too seemed to cross backward through more than a decade and collide unexpectedly, at some turn of fate, with the imagined figure of a handsome black-haired boy.
Across the long table lay the files of all twelve victims, Number One through Number Twelve, arranged in two terrible rows of photographs.
Number One at the beginning was Ling He. His real name was listed as unknown and he was recorded as a foreign national; the pure mixed-race face in the photograph possessed an unmistakable beauty no one could confuse. Then came Number Two, Mai Yunliang; Number Three, Lu Yilun; Number Four, Bei Jiahong… At the very end, Number Twelve was Yan Xiaodao as a child. His photograph and Ling He’s sat at opposite ends of a diagonal across the table, facing one another from afar.
Yan Xiaodao bit down on the final half of his cigarette, his voice hoarse. “My adoptive mother knows nothing. Don’t disturb her. My name and birth date came from Master Qi.”
Question marks seemed to cover every face in the room. How had Qi Baoshan known? Had Qi Baoshan himself been the intermediary who handled the trafficking back then?
Yan Xiaodao immediately denied it. “My godfather didn’t know either. Back then, he once took me to visit a fortune-telling Taoist.”
“…”
The so-called fortune teller was the same Taoist Xiaodao had mentioned to Ling He before.
That Taoist had always claimed that this adopted son was Master Qi’s money tree and treasure basin, the foundation of prosperity and smooth fortune for half his life. He had said it so convincingly that Qi Baoshan believed every word. Businessmen cared about feng shui and superstition, and Qi Baoshan placed great trust in the Taoist’s pronouncements. Every year he went up the mountain to pay his respects, deliberately bringing his adopted son to see the old master.
Qi Baoshan asked the Taoist to choose a formal name for his adopted son and also establish an auspicious birth date and the Eight Characters of his birth that could be used when registering the boy in the household system and obtaining identification documents.
Elio’s Notes: The “Eight Characters” (bazi) are the traditional year, month, day, and hour of birth expressed through the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, commonly used in Chinese fortune-telling.
The Taoist sat cross-legged on a lotus platform with incense burning before him, opened his soft drooping eyelids, and stared at the young Xiaodao for a very long time without speaking.
“Daoist Master, what do you think? What name should my son have to bring good fortune?” Master Qi asked.
“There is no question of auspicious or inauspicious. This child’s name is one character, Xiao, the Xiao in xiaoyao, carefree and unrestrained,” the Taoist muttered.
“Xiao as in xiaoyao… Then he should be called Yan Xiao?” Master Qi confirmed carefully. The sound of the name was smooth enough.
“That character only. Xiao. There’s no need to think further.” The Taoist sounded completely certain.
“Then may I ask Daoist Master to choose an auspicious set of Eight Characters for my son as well?” Master Qi truly cared for his adopted son and bowed respectfully.
The old Taoist practically snorted smoke from both nostrils. “There is no auspicious or inauspicious. A person’s birth is already decided by Heaven. It isn’t for this poor Taoist to decide. Your beloved son’s fate is what it is. Fate is not controlled by man, and even the strongest man cannot defeat Heaven’s will.”
The old Taoist wrote the solar-calendar date “July 9, 1988” on the paper, and his expression immediately became deeply sorrowful. The wrinkles on his face seemed to sag one by one. For no visible reason, he looked heartbroken. He sighed and stared at Yan Xiaodao for a long time. “This adopted son of yours comes from a great and distinguished family. He is no ordinary creature of the pond. His fate is hard and full of obstacles. I’ve revealed Heaven’s secret as well. My own life will not be long!”
Not long afterward, the old Taoist really did ascend to immortality and promptly croak.
Master Qi specifically took his adopted son to the funeral and paid the full cost of the old Taoist’s grand burial.
……
……
Within the records of the “Twelve Young Masters of Yandu,” the authorities ultimately confirmed ten actual victims. Only two boys, through strange turns of fate, had been extraordinarily lucky enough to escape and end up outside it. Now the truth had finally surfaced.
As for how the boy named Han Xiao had ended up abandoned along a road near a village, and how much of the past he might still remember, those answers would have to come from the police continuing to dig relentlessly into his real family background.
The orphan Xiaodao who had wandered onto a rural roadside ultimately took the name Yan Xiao and lived through more than a decade of openhearted joys and sorrows under “July 9, 1988,” his actual birthday. Now, at last, he had opened before himself this patched-together book of fate, its pages stitched from fragments, and turned back to the first broken, painful prologue. But the season of green willows was already gone, and the pure, beautiful days of childhood would never return.