On Valentine's Day 2015, I almost became a corpse in a suitcase

We lifted Ling into the back seat and Fyren started the car and turned into the lane.

"Shane didn't expect us to sense his intentions, and now we have his brother, waiting for him to call." Fyren said from the car, "Keep an eye out for a public restroom on the side of the road."

"I'm a little anxious too after being so scared just now." I said.

"It's getting rid of that thing." Fyren whispered.

"Fuck!" With the white powder still in the car, I suggested, "McDonald's near the guide."

"There aren't any fast food places around here." Fyren taps the navigation, takes a sharp turn onto Fossewater Road, and five minutes later, pulls up in front of a Wallace's.

"You go ahead and order, I'll take care of it in the restroom." Fyren instructed from inside the car.

I order two prix fixe meals and find a table to sit at. Shortly afterward, Fyren came out, wiping his hands on a paper towel and nodding at me.

"I figured Shane had his eye on us from the start." I came back from a bathroom break and heard Fyren tell me.

"How early?" I unwrap the fried chicken burger.

"At least until we sneak into his house." Fyren said, "Remember that laptop in the living room with the camera pointed at the back of the recliner, didn't notice the problem at the time, and now it turns out it was all planned by Shane."

"Not really, what do cameras have to do with planning or not?" I didn't respond for a moment.

"When you use a monitor to look after a paralyzed patient, you usually point the camera at the front of the patient, right, let alone a computer that allows video interaction."

Fyren says, "The correct position would be to place the computer on the TV stand with the screen facing the patient. But by placing the computer in the corner of the coffee table, the focus is not on the camera, but on the back of the computer."

"Back?"

"Shane wanted to reassure us that a random search of his house would not be filmed."

"He made us search on purpose?" I was surprised.

"So far," Fyren analyzes, "As a rule of thumb, most of what you find when you investigate something in reality are useless clues. That day's investigation at his house, do you think in retrospect that it went too well?"

At that time, we learned through Ling's injury certificate, insurance contract, file and graduation group photo that he had a history of drug abuse, was friends with the man who died of drug abuse in Guangzhou in 2011, and the cause of his burns.

From there, he speculates on the fact that Shane may have taken the fall for his brother, and that a brother who loves his brother would naturally not set up a frame-up.

We find more information and photo albums of Shane in his room and learn that he is kind to people, cares for his family, practiced martial arts, and is a Chiu Chow actor, furthering the conclusion that he may have been used by FuBian without knowing it.

"It was this information that led us to meet with Shane, and the whole search didn't even take more than half an hour." Fyren said, "As soon as we met with him, he accomplished his goal."

"Playing us like pawns?" I pulled out the small notebook in my pocket and flipped through it.

"It does seem harder to get." Fyren squeezed ketchup onto the fries, "What are you looking at?"

"The bookkeeping book I found in that utility room at his house this morning," the first few pages of the book had living expenses and the last page had contact information for several people. "

Bin wrote in his most recent essay that his dad hired a babysitter to come over and take care of the patient, this book should belong to the same babysitter who was scared off by the patient's appearance, and when you say that the items in the room were intentionally furnished by Shane, this babysitter should have been aware of the original setup of his house. Ask around."

I called the phone number of one of the contacts inside the book, pretending to be the head of the household and looking for a babysitter, and got the number.

I lowered my voice, pretending to be Shane's voice, and asked the nanny in Teochew, "I can't find my brother's injury certificate and insurance contract in the study drawer, did you notice it when you were cleaning up earlier? The other party didn't notice any difference in her voice and answered me in full.

"Soon, very soon. I'll get back to you in a couple days." I hang up.

Fyren looks at me, "Did she say the drawer had these?"

"She said she didn't touch the contents when she packed it and wasn't sure." I replied to Fyren, "But then turned to me and asked when she could return to work."

The nanny didn't quit because she was afraid of the patient's face, but Shane dismissed her and promised her that he would get her back to work afterward.

Combined with Shane's other moves, the answer to his doing so is obvious: he knows we've come to Tidewater to find him, fired the nanny early to give us smooth and unobstructed access to his home, and put out physical evidence in his home to entice us, to meet with him.

Driving the stolen car and picking back roads, I arrived at Xidi Park in Shantou two hours later, where I got out of the car and carried down the medical chair from the trunk to branch out.

The two of them took Ling out of the backseat, and Fyren took the car again and abandoned it somewhere, after which he took a taxi to meet me, during which I found a children's toy store and bought a pair of magnetic stylus boards, and we took a taxi to find a hotel in Haojiang District to stay in.

I look at the clock and it's past zero, February 14, 2015, Valentine's Day.

"That's not right," Fyren said as she checked the caller log in her room, "Why hasn't Shane called yet?"

I just followed the feeding guidelines and gave Ling a night's worth of Lean Cuisine. At this point he was watching TV and I turned the volume down.

"Ling," I try to call him, and he looks sideways, eyes on the ground.

I pulled my chair over to him, "You know what we're talking about, don't you?"

His eyes flickered, his head bobbed slightly, and he nodded slowly.

"We're not bad people." I said.

He bowed his head, the top of it facing me, emitting a pungent medicinal odor.

"Would you mind answering a few questions for me?" I pulled out my pad, "Write here."

He hesitated, then nodded afterward.

"Why are you playing dumb in front of your brother?" I ask in a single word, and Fyren leans in.

Ling bowed his head and took the pen with his right hand, his index and middle fingers glued and bent, and he circled the barrel with his blackened ring and tail fingers, and wrote laboriously on the writing pad, "He," "Burn," "I "

Fyren and I looked at each other in disbelief before asking assiduously, "Did he know about the fire at the Cheerful KTV originally?"

Ling nods and writes again, "cheat," "me," and "go." There's not enough on the board to write, he points to the erase button, I scrape to the left, erasing the three words, and watch as he writes, "drunk," and "burn."

"He tricked you into going to a karaoke bar and then got you drunk? You got burned after that." I asked.

He nodded.

"Did he ever take the fall for you in Canton in 2011?" Fyren probed and asked.

He nodded.

"Why would you want to hurt you again when you get out of prison?"

He writes, "poison," "no," "listen," "word," erases the words. "mom," "die," "gas."

"You're on drugs, you don't listen, and your mom is pissed off at you, so he's going to hurt you?" I guessed based on the meaning of his words.

He nods, tears dripping down his leg. Write: "Penalty", "I".

"He wanted to get rid of Ling, but never found a suitable opportunity to do it, and just happened to learn about FuBian's criminal plan, so he tricked Ling into going to a KTV, and afterward got him drunk and used a knife to get rid of the suspicion." Fyren summarized to me.

Ling nodded slowly.

"But he ended up saving you?" I asked.

He nods and writes, "love," and "I."

"He just needs you to be obedient, right?" I asked, "When you become like this, you obey."

Nod.

I turn to Fyren, "If Shane intended to frame Ling, he had to know when the arsonist committed the crime, huh?"

"How many times has your brother, taken you to Cheerful KTV?" whispered Fyren to Ling.

"1." A trembling hand wrote.

We settled Ling and went to the site of the Cheerful KTV in Haojiang District, where an arson attack took place on April 20 last year. Now the whole site has been razed to the ground, and looking at a piece of plan erected on the periphery, the place is going to be converted into a shopping mall.

Across the street from the KTV is a street of stores that coincides with Valentine's Day and the festive atmosphere.

At the floorboards near the sign of a tobacco and liquor store, there are still traces of fire, so it must have been affected by the fire at that time.

We went into the store to buy a Chinese cigarettes, Fyren site unwrapped a packet, handed the shopkeeper one, the shopkeeper listened to Fyren accent, asked is the Northeast, right, he was a soldier in Beijing when he was young, there are a number of Northeast comrades.

Fyren climbed in with him in passing.

"You guys came to Shantou to play, huh?"

"Isn't there a mall going up across the street, and in the future I'd like to plop down a store here and do some trading." Fyren lit the other side on fire.

"That place has bad feng shui." The shopkeeper smokes and shakes his head, "A lot of evil things have happened."

"You mean the fire last year?"

"I witnessed the scene at the time, it was very tragic, two dozen people died." The shopkeeper exaggerated the number.

"I can feel the fire," Fyren asked, "I see there's a road between them, and I'm surprised the walls on your side are blackened."

"It wasn't a burn." The owner smokes, colorfully, "You guys don't know what the guy who started the fire used to light it, do you, he poured kerosene along the aisle on the second floor of the KTV, then lit one of those big fireworks at the exit and shot it in the direction of the window, the flames splattered all over the place, and all of a sudden there was a big fire. Some of the fireworks broke through the window and shot up to me and almost set my place on fire too, bad luck."

The arsonist was the owner of a fireworks factory, and it would make sense to use fireworks to set a fire.

"Is the KTV across the street doing well? How come so many people died?" Fyren asked again.

"Generally, but there were really a lot of people that day." The owner said, "For one thing, I remember the day of the accident was a weekend, the second is that before the accident, the business has been in front of the door with a loud speaker propaganda, said the opening half a year, a big payoff, April 20, the whole field half-price, with the repeater like, those days by the noise annoyed to death, are almost want to call the police, I did not expect to turn around in the eye of the accident."

The KTV building across the street from the stores had been torn down to rubble and was surrounded by blue tin outside, we entered through the gate. Taking out our cell phones and faking a touch, a man in a workman's cap approached us, looking like a janitor, and asked what we were doing.

Fyren handed me cigarettes again, and I said in Teochew that we were carrier engineers measuring cell phone signals nearby, and pulled a bunch of jargon about 3G, communications, base stations, antenna coverage, and so on, and the guy was bluffed.

One writer said, "Strange conversations have magical effects." I thought so.

"Go on in." The superintendent eventually let us go, and we were just heading in when he called out to us again, handing us two yellow work caps.

We look along the edge of the ruins as Fyren tries to figure out the floor plan of the KTV at the time from the debris and use it to recreate the crime scene.

"Look out for wooden doors." I really found a door panel in the garbage and lifted it up to see a sign posted: AIDS prevention is everyone's responsibility. It is ironic that a place for AIDS prevention was eventually destroyed by AIDS sufferers.

After traveling to a pile of scrap metal in the corner, Fyren stops and pulls out a piece of equipment and wipes the dust off of it, revealing the words "METRONIC DACHENG".

Fyren looked it up on his cell phone, "It's a security equipment company." Finding another smashed panel, he lifted it up to scrutinize it, "It looks like it should be some kind of module for an X-ray security machine."

"What are you doing?" A sudden bellow and we avert our eyes, a worker in a yellow uniform, "There's construction going on here, get out of here!"

We stood up, patted the dust on our bodies, and walked down to the pile of scrap metal.Fyren handed cigarettes to the workers, who looked at Fyren with suspicion and didn't take the cigarettes, and then asked, "Do you want to steal something?"

"We look like thieves!" Fyren stared at the other man and squared his shoulders.

"Then what are you doing here?" The man's voice dropped steeply as Fyren choked him.

If one didn't work, a pack, Fyren pulled out a new pack of cigarettes and shoved them into the worker's hand, "Thought I'd ask a few questions."

The worker looks around and puts the cigarette in his pocket again, "I'm just working, I don't know anything, I'll go get our chief."

"Where was all this equipment removed from?" Fyren pointed to a security panel not far away, "Why are they in bits and pieces?"

"When the first-floor aisle was demolished, it was stripped from the wall and it was all broken." The worker said.

"Which aisle?"

"It's the aisle that leads to the elevator."

"Is there a floor plan for the building?" Fyren asked.

"It's all in that basket." The worker walks over to the black plastic bucket next to the scrap iron pile, lifts the plastic sheet off the top, and picks out a piece of iron from it.

KTV floor plan drawn in iron, nailed to the wall, demolition workers unloaded in full, ready to collect as scrap to sell.

"Here?" Fyren tapped the aisle of the first floor plan, through which a narrow aisle appeared with a diagram of stairs and two elevators.

"Uh-huh."

"Is that where those devices are embedded behind the wall in this aisle?" Fyren asked.

"Well, part of the aisle is a wood-paneled wall where the equipment is hidden."

Why do we need to install security cameras in the aisles of KTVs? Because FuBian wants to anticipate when the arsonist will come to the door.

He installed two thin wooden walls in the only aisle leading to the elevator on the first floor of the KTV, and then installed modified security equipment inside the wall, as long as you hire some people, specializing in the room on the first floor inside the check, through the customers of this channel, the items carried on the body will be seen clearly.

Premeditated criminals are known to visit the scene in advance in order to find the best time and place to strike.

FuBian, in turn, has the list of people with AIDS that Haley gave him on hand, and anytime someone inside the list comes to his door - he's a potential retaliator - he's under covert surveillance.

This person may have come over three times before committing the crime to stomp around, and with the unintentional sight of the dazzling AIDS prevention signs in the aisles of the karaoke bar, spawning more malice.

As for how to induce him to do it, FuBian takes the approach of organizing a six-month opening bonus when the time is right.

This event is advertised, that is, for consumers, and pushes the arsonist to make up his mind.On Sunday, April 20, Cheerful KTV is half price for all, and is cost-effective entertainment for consumers.

For the arsonist, this day will be full of people and it is a cost-effective crime to share the fire with everyone. Nine times out of ten, he will choose this day to do it in order to maximize his crime.

The arsonist booked a private room before April 20, brought enough kerosene for that night, the brightest fireworks, and sat alone with the neon flashes.

Surrounded by songs haunting the compartment, the screen was playing random songs, every now and then popped up warnings about AIDS prevention, he got bored and simply turned off the TV and drank from a bottle. By the time it was ten o'clock at night, people were drunk and slightly inebriated, the best time to commit a crime.

He stepped out of the box and down the aisle, concealed from view, dumping kerosene, emitting a pungent odor, and with a quick movement, he ran back to the exit.

Light a firework, boom! Light another one, boom! As a fireworks factory owner, he's probably never seen, fireworks fired horizontally. The flames nourish the flames, and the KTV is in purgatory.

Inside the other compartment at that moment lay Ling, who was already intoxicated.Shane had left the scene before the arsonist committed his crime.

After we were informed of Shane's fucking name, we looked for someone, to check her cause of death, and around noon, we found a Long Jiang Pig's Feet restaurant, and were eating when we received a reply message: death in January 2014 due to a heart attack.

"Ling pissed off his mom while his brother was in jail for drugs. shane should have tried to correct him when he got out, but it was too late.

He feels that his brother has been wasted by drugs and that keeping him would only drag him down, and is resentful because of his mother's death.

Just in time to learn that there was going to be a man-made fire at FuBian and YasinChen's KTV, so they took the opportunity to trick Ling into the box, get him drunk or just outright mesmerized, and let him get burned." Fyren smoothed out the cause and effect.

"Ling also said that it was his brother who saved him in the end." After running around in the morning, I was starving, rattled off a large mouthful of rice, swallowed it whole, and said:

"What I can't figure out is, in a fire is the hardest way to control the extent of injuries, and it's extremely dangerous to perform a rescue, so on what basis did his brother judge the timing of the rescue? And how did he conduct the rescue?"

"It's really hard to pre-determine injuries in a fire, and I think Shane had just hoped that Bro would be burned to the point of mobility so that he could be contained. But I didn't realize it would end up burning so badly." Fyren speculated.

"He hasn't called you a single time so far?" It's been a day and a half since we've had his brother, I wondered.

Fyren pulled out his cell phone, "Never mind, call him and see."

Fyren puts the phone to his ear, looks at me, and after a minute, shakes his head at me, "Didn't answer."

"So what's next?" I asked.

"It's sick to burn your own brother like that just to make him obey." Fyren said, "The Orchid Tide Theater Troupe is in Shantou, go find someone who grew up with him and ask them to see what kind of person Shane really is."

In 2006, Teochew Opera was selected for the National Intangible Cultural Heritage List - and that's putting it nicely.

The bad way to put it is that it has to be remembered and preserved in such a historically enshrined way that it has become obsolete among the new generations.

Because of the decline of Chiu Chow opera, Orchid Chiu Chow Theater Troupe has had to change its location several times, from a long and respected troupe, into the present need to rely on a few senior fans to support the group to survive.

For the love of it, the group would get together regularly to sing, while during the week they would disperse to make a living.

Whenever there are performances in the four villages, they will perform on stage, and the income is not enough, just for the sake of lively and happy.

We found the stronghold of the Orchid Chiu Chow Theater Troupe on East Huan Cheng Road in Chenghai District, Shantou, in a suite on the first floor of an old residential building.

Approach, we heard a long singing voice out, follow the sound and go, a door is open, we look inside, indoor floor with a variety of large and small Teochew opera musical instruments, hanging on the wall in the center of a plaque, the wood is dark, more cracks.

It was a long time ago, but the words "Orchid Chiu Chow Theatre Troupe" on the plaque are still bright red, and it seems that someone regularly paints the colors. On the display stand under the plaque, there are various trophies.

On the left wall, there are a number of banners and awards. On the right wall, there are various photographs, mostly black and white, and at the top is a portrait of a black-haired old man.

A woman in a housecoat with her back to the door, standing in rehearsal, I knocked gently and the woman stopped moving, her singing stopped, and she turned her head to look back. It was a kind face.

"Hello Auntie, we are reporters," I raised my camera and said in Teochew, "We would like to do some interviews with the Orchid Teochew Opera Troupe, is it convenient?"

"Welcome welcome welcome." The woman smiles, her round cheeks showing dimples. She guides us to the mahogany chairs by the door to sit down, boils water, takes out an iron tea canister from under the coffee table, scoops two spoons of tea rice with a tea spoon, and pours it into a tealight, "Are you guys used to drinking fried tea?" We nodded our heads in a hurry.

Whenever there is a cultural assignment, students from various schools in Shantou come here for a visit. The women are happy to spread the culture of Teochew Opera and answer all our questions.

She is the daughter of the director of the Orchid Tide Theater Troupe, and there is a large black-and-white group photo on the wall that looks exactly like the group photo Shane saw at his home.

At that time, a certain person in the center of the group photo was cut out by Shane, and at this moment, we find out that this person is the head of the group, i.e. the effigy himself, named Xiao.

From the biography noted below the posthumous photo, the time of death was last month.

"Did you go peacefully?" I asked.

The woman dropped her tears and shook her head, "There was a car accident, I told him he was getting older and traveling I drove him, but just wouldn't give in to old age and it happened."

"How did it go wrong?"

"It's that accident at Lianyang Bridge." The woman choked, "It's all life, let's not talk about it."

"Isn't this kid Shane?" i point to the teenager standing next to Xiao in the black and white group photo.

"Eh, you know him?" The women look at me.

"Didn't you guys go to Jieyang to perform a few days ago? We were there, and he played the flower girl and did a great job." I said.

"He's really good, I heard he went to jail for drugs a few years ago, thought I wouldn't see him again, didn't expect to get out and back on track so quickly." The woman said.

"How's his relationship with Xiao?" I ask.

"My father is especially fond of him, almost more than he is of me." The woman said.

"Does this brother still do hipster theater?" Fyren pointed to the teenager standing next to Shane, hitching a shoulder with him.

"He quit a long time ago," the woman recalled, "I think around 2000."

"Do you have his contact information? We'd like to interview a few more people so the story is comprehensive."

"We still have exchanges on New Year's holidays," the woman took out a business card inside a steel box in her drawer, "His paper factory is in the industrial area of Watating Village, just around the corner."

The roar of the machines is amplified by the spacious factory shed and becomes distant. High up on the factory wall, four whirring exhaust fans are installed, and rolls of paper as thick as oil drums are stacked in one corner.

On the other side is a fully automated paper-making machine, where grains of rolled paper are cut and sent to a conveyor belt, and workers on both sides yard into cartons.

With the introductory note given by the woman, we easily met Mu, the owner of the paper mill, in his thirties and soft-spoken.

He invited us to a parlor in the factory and opened the tea canister box with the key, this time with Dahongpao.

The woman said Xiao liked Shane, but Shane cut Xiao out of all the photos, obviously harboring a grudge. In several photos, Shane and Mu are seen together.

It is evident that the two had a deep relationship during their teenage life in the theater group. The best way to get the truth out is to go straight to the point so that the other person has no time for hesitation.

"From what Xiao said, you and Shane were close at the time?" I asked Mu.

"Got along best with him in the troupe," Mu said, sipping her tea, "but I didn't hang out with him after I quit."

"Xiao wasn't very nice to Shane?" I throw out the question.

"Who did you hear that from?" Mu looked surprised.

"Shane was jailed for drug abuse in 2011, I read an interview with him, he said he got to where he is today because of other people's faults, and he named Mr. Xiao, saying that he was often physically punished by the troupe, which left him in the shadows, and he never recovered." I used my words and begged the other person to fall for the trick, "What kind of person would do that, make his own mistakes but blame others."

Mu was silent, but his brow furrowed as he proceeded to brew his tea, and suddenly said, "There's something to what he's saying."

"Xiao really physically punished him, huh?"

"Can you turn that off?" Mu pointed to the recorder on the desktop.

"Xiao has passed away, things have gone on for too long, it's inappropriate to rehash these old scores, but it's hard for me to hold it in my heart if I don't say it out loud, you guys delete this paragraph as me spitting out my bitterness, it's okay."

I turned off the recorder, "Go ahead."

"To say corporal punishment is to elevate Xiao." Mu said, "Xiao is a bad man, and there isn't a boy in the troupe who hasn't been violated by him. Of all of them, Shane suffered the most. That's why I quit."

Xiao often takes Shane backstage at the studio, puts down the curtain, paints Shane in sultry flower girl make-up and powdered costumes, and then molests him.

Shane asked his best friend Mu for help several times, and Mu, a teenager, hid in front of the shed and witnessed the proceedings through a gap in the boards, shivering and unable to move.

He couldn't face his best friend, nor could he face himself. Gradually, he distanced himself from Shane, and one day, Shane, a teenager, approached him and asked, "Do you dislike me and think I am unclean?" Mu was horrified, and soon afterward, he quit the Orchid Chiu Chow Theatre.

"All these years I deliberately stayed away from everything in Chao Drama, from Shane, because I had a guilt for him, he took drugs and committed crimes, in my opinion it was just to forget those dark memories, he was perfectly capable of pointing all the charges at Xiao, and I was the indirect culprit, if I had stopped it in time, or even if I had given him more care and called the police after quitting the troupe, he wouldn't have ended up in that situation."

Mu shook her head, "I failed him and thought about apologizing to him, but I just couldn't face seeing him. xiao's accidental death was so like providence."

"How was Shane when he was in the theater company?" Fyren asked.

"The heart is very good, the person is very clever, good at inventing and creating, I remember there is a large garden bed in front of the courtyard to be watered regularly, which is both wasteful of water and tiring, he later figured out a way to lead a few water pipes to the garden bed, plug the mouth small, regularly open the faucet to spray, and then the work can be done, which made me very impressed. And because of practicing martial arts, there are other people bullying us, it's him who takes the lead to solve the problem, there is a big brother style, we are willing to listen to him."

Mu recalls, "But after being hurt by Xiao, one could feel that his whole person changed."

"Changed?"

"It feels like the life force is gone, and when I'm idle and listless, I just sit around."

Mu says, "Once I played the flower girl, I felt demonic again, like a girl who snuggled up to me and cried easily."

"We saw him play the flower girl the other day and we really didn't recognize him." I seconded.

"One night, I got up to pee, I heard a chirping sound outside, accompanied by the sound of ho-ho-ho, I was scared, so I stood on the toilet sink and looked out the window, I saw Shane crouching in the corner, he painted a white face with white powder, and wiped a touch of black between his eyebrows, and then black oil along the bridge of his nose, as you know, the white face in Chiu Chow Opera generally represents a treacherous and vicious person, seeing someone painting such makeup in the middle of the night scared me. You also know that white face in Chaozhou Opera generally represents a treacherous and murderous person, and to see someone painting such makeup and squatting in the corner in the middle of the night scared me, and then I fixed my eyes on him, and he was holding a plastic rope in his hand, and the end of the rope was lit on fire, and the melted plastic dripped on the rats in the rat cage at the lower end, blazing the rats into a frenzy."

He went on to say, "I was afraid he'd find out and slipped back to bed, and the next day he acted like he'd forgotten it was there, so I thought I'd had a nightmare and snuck back to the scene to see what was going on, and I found the corpse of the rat in the cage dripping with congealed black plastic oil, and the whole thing had been sliced in half, and I puked on the spot. The fact that I stayed away from him afterward had something to do with it."

January 17, 2015 at 9:00 a.m., Shantou, Shantou 102 bus when passing the Lianyang Bridge, the driver was the car thugs with a knife stabbed in the neck artery and fainted, criminals grab the steering wheel, to the right to beat to death, the car crashed through the bridge fence, flying down the Lianyang River. Fifteen people in the car, only one passenger survived.

Xiao was on the bus at the time, and every weekend morning he would take public transportation to the theater company to have tea with friends.

We checked the identity of the offender and found a blank man, and the report noted that he had all ten fingerprints chipped, was suffering from AIDS, and was mute - without a tongue. His crime was recognized as retaliation against society.

This man has the same features as the man who once attacked me, caused me a neck injury, and ended up jumping to his death.Haley had said that FuBian picks his killers from AIDS patients to erase identities.

Both, no doubt, are killers trained by FuBian. One was sent to murder us, and the other became Shane's prop for his crime - killing his enemy Xiao.

Killing him alone would easily reveal their criminal intent and risk implicating themselves, so they went out of their way to fake it as a social incident and use the lives of the remaining twelve to cover up the motive.

"The scarier scenario is that the crash was originally planned by the Bat gang, and Xiao was just a bonus." Fyren said.

"Ling, the brother, Xiao, the teacher, but anyone Shane wanted to get rid of, he used this criminal technique."

"AIDS killers are not far from death, if they are ashamed of their families, it is inevitable that they want to leave them a legacy before they die, FuBian catches this psychological weakness of theirs, and it's easy to use money to get them to sell their lives for him. They are all time bombs, it's a make-or-break corner, the number should be more than two, be careful in everything."

Over the course of the day, we ran through three places in quick succession, learned about the arson at the Cheerful KTV, and learned that Shane had been sexually abused by his own teacher when he was a young student, a nightmare experience that lent itself to a tchotchke mask and splintered into other personalities. When normal, he is enthusiastic, positive, intelligent and a lauded individual.

When he plays the flower girl, his eyes, accent and figure are all female, as if he is in the theater. There is also a personality in which the slightest evil thought gathers in the bottom of his heart to form a black pool; he squats by the pool, smears his eyebrows and nose with black water, and eventually becomes a shadowy, brutal, and cunning man.

It was this blackface personality that joined the bat cult. This is the same black-faced personality that set up the burning of his brother, caused a car accident on the bus that his teacher was riding, and intended to frame us with drugs.

In the evening, we found a beef fried kuey teow store for dinner. Beef fried kuey teow is my particular favorite food, but I don't have much appetite at the moment. I wasn't afraid of facing so many vicious thugs and encountering danger before, even if it was FuBian, but Shane was different, I was vaguely worried, "Such a person doesn't go by the book, we can't deal with him in a conventional way."

"We took off our locator, switched cars and acted covertly, there's no way he could have found us."

"But he hasn't contacted us until now."

Fyren glanced at his cell phone.

"I was wondering if Ling might have tipped off his brother. Then our whereabouts will be exposed."

"That's a bit much for you to think about." Fyren said.

"There's a basis for that." I said, "You remember his exchange with us in the hotel room."

Fyren looks at me, signaling me to continue.

"When a reporter covers an event, there's a choice of point of view, such as a nonfiction story, usually a third-person point of view, as an outsider substituting into the event." I said, "There's nothing wrong with what Ling told us about the plot, but I always felt like he was telling it from an awkward perspective."

"Such as?"

"He was a victim of a fire, which means that he should be from the victim's perspective, because he was set up by his brother and is supposed to hate him." I analyzed, "But when it comes to why his brother is trying to harm him, he phrases it like this, because he is on drugs, disobedient, and his mom is pissed off, so his brother is trying to punish him. This is more of a rationalization for the brother's crime. I'm the victim, and my brother victimized me because I was in the wrong in the first place. Isn't that strange?"

Fyren nodded, "That makes some sense."

"Also, you were beside yourself summarizing to me, based on the information he said, that this was a crime planned by FuBian, and I noticed him nodding." I pause, "Why did he nod, did he know FuBian?"

Fyren looks around for no-smoking signs, there are none, takes cigarettes from his box, shares one with me, lights it, and contemplates.

"You were set up by your own brother and burned to death, and in the end you were lucky enough to get your life back, would you be grateful to him? Wanted to kill him, I guess." I took a drag on my cigarette, "But at the time I asked Ling why your brother saved you. What did he write?"

"Love, me." Fyren said.

"He speaks for his brother." I said, "There's only two semi possibilities, either he's been burned into Stockholm Syndrome or he's in cahoots with his brother."

"And half of them?" Fyren looks at me.

"Ling is Shane in disguise." I quickly dismissed the idea again, "But that can basically be ruled out. Because Ling was burned like that, it's impossible to achieve that effect with makeup alone. In terms of teeth alone, when I first searched Shane's house, I noticed that the patient was missing two incisors in his upper jaw and had jagged teeth in his lower jaw.When I had a late-night snack with Shane in Jieyang, his teeth were intact and straight.Shane wouldn't have pulled out and broken his own teeth just to impersonate his brother."

"There's no need to warn us about drugs in the car at a highway intersection if you're an accomplice?" Fyren questioned.

"What if it's trying to win us over." I said, "After all, even if we do get drugs planted, we still have a chance of being released as long as we have proof. But by setting up the threat first, then disarming it for us and removing our guard, the success rate of doing it again will be much higher."

"So assuming he's in cahoots with his brother, the worst case scenario now is that Ling informs his brother while we're out investigating and Shane is now hiding in a hotel room, waiting to ambush us." Fyren said.

Holding on to the hope that it was just us being overly concerned, I packed Ling a kuey teow soup.

Valentine's Day, coinciding with the Chinese New Year is approaching, in the street below the hotel, some couples in the fireworks, I stopped to watch for a while, the fire from the paper tube erected on the ground to rise, explode in mid-air, light flames bright, and then extinguished.

Entering the hotel, the receptionist was playing with her cell phone, looking towards the couch in the lobby, one person was blocked by a newspaper, I walked upstairs, looked again and realized that behind the newspaper was an old man.

On the second floor, the room is in the middle of the hallway, "If there really is someone in the room, with a gun, it's too late for us to run in either direction left or right, so run out the door and immediately stand against the wall and wait for the man inside to chase him out, he won't be expecting this hand from us, take advantage of his surprise and grab his weapon before we fight him." Fyren commanded in a low voice.

"Nightwalker defense?" I joked.

"Sort of, you can write it down."

Walking softly to the door and standing, Fyren calls Shane again on his cell phone, it connects and I listen to the sound in the room, there is no ringing or vibration, Fyren turns off his cell phone.

I opened the door without entering the house, after which I turned on the lights, Fyren checked the toilet to the right of the door, I then watched behind the walls on both sides of the walkway, and if it was OK, leaned over to check under the bed before entering the house, pulling back the curtains and looking at the eaves and air conditioner racks. Then get out the wall listen and listen to each of the left and right rooms.

We had long ago planned the steps we would take when we entered, and Fyren took out his door card and opened the door.

We stood outside the door for a moment, unmoving, as Ling sat by the window of the room and turned her head to watch us come in, just as a firework exploded just outside the window, brightening the room momentarily as Ling flashed us a smile.

"Huh," the jagged yellow teeth showed, and the glare hit the distorted face, a shadow lengthening at the corner of his mouth, as creepy as a sardonic grin. I turned on the light.

Nope. A flash of foreboding flashed through my mind. Quickly, I swept Fyren into the open restroom. As he fell into the floor, a man wearing a mask, about 5'8" tall, and wearing leather boots flashed out in the middle of the aisle.

He was armed with a silenced shotgun and fired directly at us.

The bullet strikes and we fall to the toilet floor, the door is blasted with a round hole and Fyren kicks the toilet door shut with his foot.

He grazed his left arm and we stood up quickly, the toilet door handle was then blasted off, I had lifted the kueh kueh soup box, hot smoke rolled out, and ducked behind the toilet door, which was kicked open as the killer prepared to enter with a gun.

I turned toward the outside and dumped hot soup in his face, and he exited the restroom with a scream of anguish as his messy gun blasted the water heater. We were just about to take advantage of the opportunity to escape when we realized that there was another footstep coming in the room.

Fyren pulls out the locking wire from his pocket and quickly wraps it around the electrodes of the triangular plug before inserting it into the socket, causing a short circuit and the room to go dark at once. Opening the door, he props up a towel on a coat hanger and draws the killer to fire.

Four rounds had been fired, we heard each other reloading and quickly rushed out of the restroom, the door had been chipped, we opened it, turned to the right and ran, immediately stopping on the way out, standing against the wall and adjusting our breathing.

The killer came after us, not expecting us to switch from defense to offense, Fyren took advantage of the opponent's pause, grabbed the barrel of the gun, clamped it under his armpit, and used the inertia to throw him out of the way, the opponent pulled the trigger, and the bullet hit the back of Fyren's wall, Fyren vigorously kicked the opponent's chest with his foot, and stroked the gun out of the killer's hands.

The opponent slammed into the opposite wall and leaned on the ground, Fyren gripped the barrel of the gun and flung it vigorously with the handle into the head of the opponent, who lay down, and because of the force of the blow, the gun came right out of his hand.

I stepped forward and picked up my gun, when another assassin came running out of the room, also black masked and tall, but instead of a gun he had a short knife in his hand, and I pointed my gun at him and shouted "Stop, shoot again!" He didn't move and stabbed the knife.

The building is narrow and movement is limited, he's pinned down by Fyren, taking advantage of this, I smash the handle of my gun hard on his chin, then on the bridge of his nose, he backs away, and finally on his forehead, he faints and falls to the ground.

Fyren bound the two men with plastic ties and asked a tenant who had sniffed out the door to help call the police.

During the fight, Shane removed the bandages from his body and fled from the room.Fyren was grazed by loose bullets on his left arm and burned on both palms.I told him to stay put and chase Shane myself.

Yes, the burn victim is Shane, who poses as his brother, points out the drugs to us in the stolen car, removes any suspicion we may have had about his identity, and in a second step, convinces us of his victimhood by telling us the truth about his brother setting him up.

In order for the plan to succeed, he shaved his head, wrapped bandages around his nose and ears, glued the two index and middle fingers of his right hand together, and even went so far as to pull out his two upper jaw incisors and break the teeth of his lower jaw in a vise to make them jagged. This was done in order to achieve the real goal of sending assassins to kill us.

The fact that our movements were hidden and we stayed in unknown hotels added to their convenience.

Under the bed in the room afterward, two 32-inch suitcases brought by the killers were found, one containing large plastic wrap, saws, and knives.

If we were killed, we would be dismembered by them on the floor of the toilet covered with plastic wrap and transported in two suitcases.

It also explains why these two killers are about the same size as us; just take our IDs, check out of the room wearing masks, take away the suitcases with the body parts, and we disappear without a trace from there.

How did I find out about Shane's trick? It was all in the blink of an eye when the fireworks went off.

That creepy smile connected four sets of images in my mind: teenager Shane painted in blackface squatting on the floor abusing mice, the Cheerful KTV arsonist setting fire with fireworks, the Chiu Chow station that plays a clip of fireworks to congratulate the New Year before their daily morning program, and Ling's howling.

I realized that the reason Ling howled every morning was not a drug attack, but fear. The arsonist had set fire to the KTV with fireworks, and the sound of that explosion combined with the agony of the flames burning his body was deeply embedded in the depths of Ling's mind as a source of fear.

As the Chinese New Year is approaching, Chiu Chow Radio will broadcast a special video of fireworks at 7:28 a.m. When Ling saw the video, her fear was triggered, and she reproduced the tragic situation of the fire at that time, so she howled more than once.

The images disappeared and his howling stopped. This behavior is constant, day in and day out, and it's never faked.Ling is not a sane person, and that patient we're communicating with, it's not him.

And when the fireworks burst behind him just now, he was not only indifferent, but also smiled at us. The patient with the black ointment between his eyes is clearly Shane in blackface.

He removed the bandages from his body in the room and fled barefoot. Following the trail of bandages littering the floor, I chased him down the alley, gradually closing the distance between us. He couldn't outrun me.

Turning into an alley, he suddenly stopped, the entrance to the alley ahead was blocked by a stone wall, a dead end.

He had his back to me, his bandages removed and clean, bald, barefoot, and wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs.

"You must be Shane." I shouted from the back.

He turned and looked up, the dim streetlight illuminating his face, not seeing the full extent of it as it was previously obscured by bandages.

Now the whole makeup is presented, with deep black ointment applied between the eyebrows and eyes, and then drawn down along the bridge of the nose, and, upon closer inspection, his face is painted with the very figure of an upside-down bat. I was amazed, no wonder I hadn't noticed the tattoo on him before.

"Huh." He crouched, his right hand slashing toward the bricks on the ground, shattering them, then picking two tapered stones out of them, clutching each in his hand as he walked toward me.

I remembered that he had practiced martial arts, back out of the alley, and saw a drying rack in the open space, from which I drew a bamboo pole, clothes have fallen to the ground. The bamboo pole is three meters long, I hold in both hands, deep into the alley, to him pestle.

The alleyway was narrow and the bamboo pole couldn't stretch, so he dodged nimbly and took advantage of me hitting the wall to stick his body against the pole and quickly rolled towards me, close.

I had to put down the bamboo pole and fight him, his hand holding the sharp stone was like a tiger's palm, he struck at me in a series of quick blows, the stone smashed into the wall, rubbing out the fire, I dodged out of the way, I didn't realize that he was curving his palm forward, and slammed his fists into my chest, I took many steps backward, gasping for air.

Before I could slow down, he ran forward again, his hands going up and down, and the only thing I could do was to block it with my arms, but I was continually bruised by the sharp rocks, and trying to grab his arms, I was slightly distracted, and he stomped into my right knee.

I lost my balance and fell forward, and as I saw his right hand building up momentum and swinging upward toward my head, I shielded my head with both hands, my right wrist was struck by a rock, and I tumbled backward.

Nose bleeding, fortunately with the hand to protect, otherwise by the stone hit the face, the nose bone at least broken. I wanted to prop up the body, found that the right wrist can not force, accompanied by a sharp pain, a look, the whole wrist is hanging down, I guess the fracture, the skin is red, filled with bruises inside.

He walked towards me, saliva dripping from his mouth, seemingly in a state of frenzy, with a blood-stained sharp stone in his hand, I was no match for him, and figured I would be crippled by him in one or two more rounds at the most.

I was backing up on the ground, bracing myself with my left arm, and had just turned to run when he kicked me in the back and sent my whole body sprawling forward.

"I'll smash your head." He said from behind, his voice like that of a dying old man, "Don't move, don't move!"

I felt a weight pressing down on my back, he was sitting on my waist and I was holding on for dear life with my left arm, the moment I lay down, there was no chance of survival.

Dry! I felt a BBQ stick on the ground, turned to the right and stabbed him through his right arm, he didn't pause at all, as if he was a painless body, instead he punched me so hard in the face with his fist that my nose bled and I was completely laid out.

Sirens come from the entrance of the alley and hope flares in my heart as I hear footsteps running again and a woman's voice, "Over there." Shane senses something is wrong, stands up, runs down the alley, and I yell, "Over here!"

He threw away the stone in his hand, went to the stone wall at the back of the alley, jumped up, kicked and stomped on the left and right walls, and went over the fence in two tries.

The cop walks into the alley, Fyren, his right shoulder bandaged and his hands wrapped, looks down at me lying on the ground in a blur and reaches out with his left hand to pull me to my feet, "Gently, my palms still hurt."

In the ambulance, I learned that the two killers who had just been ambushed in the hotel had injected themselves with prepared snake venom on the way to the police station and had died by the time they reached the hospital.

"AIDS patient, mute, no fingerprints." Fyren said, "Blank killer again."