Chapter 150

Fei Du strolled to a corner of the living room. There was a very elegant little whiteboard standing there. He was the one who'd bought it, not expecting that he'd use it only a couple of times before it became the tool of an individual surnamed Luo.—Before, Luo Wenzhou had simply been long-winded; now, in the midst of his jabbering, he also wanted to sum up all the trifling analyses in that jabbering, hanging them up on the whiteboard, accomplishing an omnidirectional exhortation directed at Fei Du's eyes and ears; it was very deranged.

Fei Du hesitated. Out of consideration for a certain person's toil, he couldn't bear to clean it. He flipped the whiteboard over, picked out a marker, and drew a coordinate plane with the x-axis showing time and the y-axis showing source of stress.

Compared to things that had happened recently, more distant memories were more malleable, with a greater likelihood that the brain would suitably vary and revise them.

And compared to immaterial little matters, the greater an impact a source of stress had on a person, the greater the feeling of indisposition it would create. It was also more likely that they would be distorted when reflected by the unconscious in a dream.

Not opening the can of cat food was a minor event that had just happened to Fei Du that day. It was a very shallow memory. He thought that instead of saying he'd dreamed it, it was better to say that he'd remembered it while half asleep. He drew a slash at the origin of the coordinate plane.

Then there was the circumstance of Luo Wenzhou being angry and himself not being able to coax him out of it.

Luo Wenzhou really had been a little fretful that night, Fei Du had felt it, but it hadn't amounted to anger. But in the end Fei Du hadn't clearly worked out whether he'd really coaxed him out of it. Because of this, perhaps he'd kept thinking it over in his dream, and his dream for some reason had made a big fuss over a minor issue, enlarging this slight concern.

Fei Du was dubious, feeling that he'd recently had less to worry about, so trifling matters could all take up space. He pondered a moment with his head tilted, then went down along the "source of stress" axis and drew a second stroke.

Next was "Tao Ran injured" and "suffocation," two entirely separate things that had been mixed into the same scene.

At this point, Fei Du put down the marker and frowned deeply, pacing a few steps in front of the whiteboard, not quite able to complete his analysis.

People's consciousness and memories hid very complicated projections and very subtle distortions. Surface logic and unconscious logic seemed to use different languages. Although Fei Du considered himself very open towards himself, it was still hard for him to objectively decipher that day's series of dreams, which was stuck like a fishbone in his throat.

Generally speaking, a dream that could startle someone awake must have touched some deep-seated anxiety and fear.

But Fei Du had examined himself, and he believed that he didn't have anxieties; fears were out of the question. For him, "fear" was like a celebrity on TV—he knew such a person existed, could see them every day on the screen, but as for how they looked in reality and what their temper and disposition were like…he had no way to judge.

He hadn't felt that he'd been in any way not calm when he'd heard the news of Tao Ran being taken to the hospital. The car crash had already happened, and only the doctors could remedy that; it had nothing to do with him. Fei Du remembered he had only spent the whole journey considering the sequence of events.

Could it be that "Tao Ran being injured" had been a huge source of stress for him, going so deep that it had touched some deeper and more intense thing in his memories?

In his dream, Tao Ran, who had been hit by a car, had appeared with his face showing signs of asphyxiation. So following that line of reasoning, an asphyxiated face was something else in his memories…but where had he seen it?

Luo Yiguo had tried a few times without being able to open the pestilential cupboard and could only run over with its tail stuck up to beg Fei Du. It fawningly rubbed Fei Du's pant leg with its round head and patted Fei Du's lower leg with its front paws.

Fei Du bent down and lifted it in front of his eyes, holding its front paws. Luo Yiguo was always very docile when it was in search of food. Its tail waved back and forth under it as it tried to force a delicate and charming expression of perfect innocence out of its fierce-looking features. It made a thin, pitiful cry.

Fei Du considered the cat's face for a while, thinking he wouldn't have superimposed the faces of those suffocating, struggling little animals onto a human face; the difference in the structure of the features was too great.

Luo Yiguo thought there was some game and meowed elaborately at him.

"Nope." Fei Du unfeelingly put Luo Yiguo back on the ground and proclaimed, "Luo Wenzhou is the only animal I can't pick up, and that's enough."

Luo Yiguo: "…"

All these two-leggers were worthless!

Fei Du considered, wiped away the writing on the whiteboard, and sent a message to Luo Wenzhou that said: "I'm going home to get something," then put on his jacket and went out.

He'd determined to return to his old house to have a look at the basement. He had passed a lightless childhood there, borne the correction of electric shock and medication countless times, even witnessed his mother's death. Fei Du truly couldn't understand why there would be a flaw in his memory of the time he'd snuck into the basement.

Luo Wenzhou had no time to look at his phone. He was chasing after the barely-glimpsed Yang Xin.

When he came to the door of the stairs, Luo Wenzhou encountered a large crowd of family members, presumably some patient's extended family turning out in full force; there were some elderly ones who'd come leaning on canes. They were firmly blocking the door of the stairs, separating him from Yang Xin.

Luo Wenzhou looked at the trembling old men and women. He really didn't want to push his way through a crowd of grandpas and grandmas who needed looking after, but Yang Xin had already vanished in the moment he'd been hesitating. Urged by the emergency, Luo Wenzhou bent his head and pushed open a window in the corridor. While a passing nurse's aide yelled in surprise, he stepped up on the windowsill and climbed down from the third floor, using the second floor's slightly projecting windowsill as a buffer. Then he leapt right down onto the artificial lawn below, rolled, and ran off before the surrounding crowd could lift their cell phones.

The main hall was overcrowded but could still be called orderly. Luo Wenzhou charged in ferociously, startling all the medical personnel on duty. A hospital guard immediately went over to question him. Luo Wenzhou carelessly shoved his work ID at the guard. "Police. Did you see a girl around twenty coming downstairs just now?"

Before the guard could speak, Luo Wenzhou glimpsed Yang Xin out of the corner of his eye, having just come down the stairs at the other end of the corridor. Yang Xin, taken unawares, met his eye. A complicated expression appeared on her tidy little face, like she was holding back from expressing pain and rage. Then she resolutely ran for the back door.

Luo Wenzhou was so angry his lungs were about to evaporate out of his head. "Stop right there!"

There was a little road at the inpatient department's back door, across which was the large hospital parking lot. The distance between Luo Wenzhou and Yang Xin was constantly decreasing. Just then, a sedan suddenly drove out of the parking lot and came right at him. Luo Wenzhou looked at the driver's face—it was the fake patrolman he and Fei Du had run into at the scene of the murder by the Drum Tower!

In a moment of desperation, he leapt up onto the hood of the car and rolled to the other side. Luckily the driver hadn't planned to run him over; the car window was half rolled down, and there seemed to be a trace of a smile at the corners of his mouth. He nodded urbanely to Luo Wenzhou, then floored the gas pedal, practically vanishing from the parking lot in a puff of smoke. Meanwhile, Yang Xin had jumped into a car and disappeared without a trace.

Luo Wenzhou's thighs had been painfully scraped by the collision just now. He couldn't resist letting loose a curse: "Motherfucker!"

Fu Jiahui had been taken in for emergency treatment. Chang Ning, meanwhile, had very considerately withdrawn, going out to buy them some drinks. Lu Youliang and Tao Ran were waiting in the oppressive hospital corridor in mutual silence. They looked up together when Luo Wenzhou, covered in fury and soil, returned.

Luo Wenzhou found a corner and patted the soil off of himself. "She got away. Two cars, one VW Bora, one Jinbei. I took down the license plate numbers and called for them to be stopped."

Lu Youliang didn't answer. He tilted up his head and leaned heavily against the wall.

Tao Ran was silent for a while. "When we were investigating Feng Bin's death, shiniang called me to come to her house, gave me shifu's testament, and…and while I was distracted put a listening device in my bag, exactly as the same as the ones on Director Lu and Xiao Wu. When Xiao Wu told me today, I…I actually…"

Tao Ran couldn't quite finish. He stared wide-eyed at Luo Wenzhou for a while, then continued with difficulty. "When I finished reading shifu's testament, there was a period where I actually felt a little gratified, thinking that shiniang's frostiness towards us all these years hadn't been her own doing. She didn't hate us, didn't disdain us, it was only that shifu had told her to distance herself from us."

But thinking about it now, if it had only been the distance of secret troubles, would they, criminal police officers who relied on their piercing observation skills for their next meal, really have had no idea? If it hadn't been genuine hatred, could it have kept Luo Wenzhou from coming to her door for three years?

"Xiao Wu? You mean that Yin Ping being hit was also their plan?" Luo Wenzhou's brain, boiling with fury, gradually cooled, and he sat down a little wearily next to Lu Youliang.

"Was that to frame Lao Zhang, too?" Lu Youliang asked.

"Yes. I suspect shiniang was tricked," Tao Ran said hoarsely. "The person plotting this behind the scenes was the one who framed Gu Zhao and killed shifu. If Old Cinder really was Yin Ping under a false name, then it's likely he had an important lead, so they wanted to kill him to silence him. He didn't die, so they wanted to use him to frame Director Zhang again… It would be easy to explain to shiniang and the others, you'd just have to say that Yin Ping didn't have any evidence, and even if he got out and testified, his testimony wouldn't be credible. It was better to use him as a prop."

Luo Wenzhou had his elbows on his knees and his hands lightly pressed together, propping his chin. "Uncle Lu, I actually came here today to ask you about someone."

"Do you want to ask about Fan Siyuan?" Lu Youliang said.

Luo Wenzhou stared. "How did you know?"

Lu Youliang was silent for a long time before quietly saying, "I guessed… Her tone talking to me and her diction made me think of him."

Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran both looked at him.

"Fan Siyuan was my teacher, too… He must have taught Lao Yang as well." Lu Youliang considered, then slowly said, "He was young then, only a few years older than us, but he was very charming. Sometimes you thought that when he looked at you he knew what you were thinking. He was talented, too, widely learned, with a powerful memory. He'd published many articles, and he taught extremely well… It wasn't the fashion to grade your teachers then, or else he would have been the most highly rated teacher among the students. When there were difficult students that the academic departments or the ideological and political teachers couldn't handle, they'd call him in and get a guaranteed result. There was one in our dormitory who got called in for a chat with him for an hour. I don't know what he said, but when he got back, he cried his eyes out, wanting nothing but to start afresh and do right."

"And Gu Zhao came in contact with him, too, right?" Luo Wenzhou said. "I looked at his resume. When Officer Gu did his graduate program, it was under him."

"Yes." Lu Youliang nodded. "Gu Zhao was sincere. He didn't go back to school to get a graduate degree in order to win promotion, he really wanted to learn. He put in a lot of time, took notes on all the books he read, never rested on weekends. If he didn't understand something, he'd keep asking until he got it clear. For a while every time he opened his mouth it was to talk about Teacher Fan. At his graduation he invited some guests, and we all went, along with Fan Siyuan."

"His relationship with Fan Siyuan was very good."

"Very good…" Lu Youliang hesitated, then said, "Oh, very good. Gu Zhao actually wasn't a very lively or outgoing person. He treated close friends and distant acquaintances very differently. You could tell he really got on pretty well with Fan Siyuan. But who knows what that person was thinking?"

"He launched the first Picture Album Project?" Luo Wenzhou asked. "What actually happened? Uncle Lu, is Fan Siyuan really dead?"

A doctor hurriedly went by. Lu Youliang looked uneasily towards the end of the hallway, as though worried some bad news would come from that direction.

"When you read them afterwards, some of the papers he published already had symptoms of extremism," Lu Youliang said. "We just weren't paying attention back then. Psychological profiling was just getting popular in this country at the time. Fan Siyuan took the lead in requesting this 'establishing a record of criminals' psychological profiles' project, wanting to research old files, reexamine some unsolved cases, find new breakthroughs. He rounded up some frontline criminal policemen at the City Bureau… The research project was a political assignment, outside of daily work, of course whether you participated or not depended on whether you were willing, but we all participated—because the National Road 327 case, where the main culprit hadn't been brought to justice, was also part of it. It had been less than a year since Gu Zhao's death then. We still hadn't been able to take a breath and get past it. I knew many of our brothers were still privately making inquiries."

"But psychological profiling can't serve as evidence in court," Luo Wenzhou said. "All the unsolved cases in the Picture Album Project in fact had suspicious parties without effective evidence against them. Unless they'd made false confessions under torture…"

"That couldn't have happened." Director Lu smiled bitterly. "One of the charges against Gu Zhao was abuse of police power. We had people watching every move we made. We all kept our tails between our legs and behaved ourselves, not daring to take a single step out of bounds… I accompanied Fan Siyuan on visits for one of the cases. After we got back, he suddenly said to me, 'Sometimes when I think about it, I really don't know who the law is meant to protect. The people restricted are always the ones who observe laws and disciplines. It's unfair.' I thought something was off about him then, but I didn't make too much of it… But then, everything started to go wrong."

Luo Wenzhou said, "You mean the suspects dying one after another in unusual circumstances?"

"Yes. The means were exactly the same as the deaths of the victims in the corresponding cases, and there were many details about the cases that we hadn't made public. So the Picture Album Project was immediately called to a halt, and all the personnel concerned were suspended and submitted to investigation," Lu Youliang said. "Fan Siyuan vanished when the investigators went to find him. He wasn't at home or at school…or anywhere. He was under heavy suspicion at the time, but it was only suspicion. There was no evidence. The bureau debated for a long time between setting him down as 'missing' or 'escaped suspect.' Then, in consideration of the City Bureau's image, they only announced that he was 'missing.' All the cases in the Picture Album Project were either handled or sealed. The search only continued privately.

"Three months later, one of his relatives received a testament. At the same time, the bureau received a report that said Fan Siyuan had appeared in the Binhai District. Binhai was even more desolate then than it is now. We went over following the report and nearly caught him."

"Nearly?"

"Fan Siyuan jumped into the ocean in the course of the pursuit," Lu Youliang said. "There were bloodstains on a reef, but his corpse was never dredged up. He remained missing. But from then on, it was as though he'd vanished off the face of the earth, and there weren't any similar cases… You know that as soon as a serial killer starts killing, it's very hard to stop. So gradually everyone began to think that he was really dead. A few years later his family had a problem with their house being torn down. For the sake of the property, his relatives came to request a declaration of death. On the record, Fan Siyuan is officially 'dead.'"