No verdict was reached that day. Deliberations were underway, drawing on input from all sides.
But the outcome seemed all but obvious: Cen Jin was taken away first, and when she rose to leave, she walked into a wall of cold, knife-sharp stares.
The room gradually emptied. Wei Lai remained in his chair without moving. Ke Ke Shu, reading the room, said nothing, puffing his cheeks in and out with boredom as he surveyed the interior and exterior of the room.
Finally, Wei Lai said: “I’m going to check on her.”
This second visit was noticeably heavier in atmosphere. The guards at the door had been increased; while they didn’t hover right at her side, the door was not permitted to be closed. Every movement had to take place in plain view.
Cen Jin’s spirits were visibly low. Seeing the surviving witness from the reserve had shaken her deeply. She spoke of the woman: “Her name is Asina. She was one of the earliest to enter the reserve—sixteen years old at the time. She wept without stopping, and I comforted her for a long time. Later I taught her how to dress wounds, and she became my assistant. Did you hear her identify herself? She’s a nurse now.”
She still had the presence of mind to care about that.
Wei Lai cut her off. “Re Lei Mi, and the fact that Sai De came for you afterward—you never mentioned those things.”
Cen Jin looked at him for a moment, then suddenly laughed. “Wei Lai, before I met you, I lived twenty-seven years. We’ve been together, and it’s not even a full month yet. I’ve only told you about my past in one night. There are so many things I haven’t spoken of—a year wouldn’t be enough to tell it all.”
Wei Lai gave a rueful smile, then nodded. “Fair point.”
Cen Jin said: “This result from the trial was also within expectations. Re Lei Mi was intelligent. People with a guilty conscience are always afraid the truth will surface—they need to find every possible way to construct a story that holds together. He knew what the truth was, and he must have analyzed the whole sequence of events exhaustively, picking away at each vulnerability, so that if things ever went wrong, he would have a more perfect account ready. He told me himself—unless I kept quiet forever, it didn’t matter where I lodged the complaint, Ka Long or the United Nations tribunal—I would never win, and no one would believe me.”
Wei Lai said: “I believe you.”
Cen Jin reached out, her fingertips drifting lightly across the back of his half-curled hand. “You believe me because you like me. And sometimes, you’re not even defending me—you’re desperately defending this feeling of yours. If it were someone else in my position, you’d say: anyone can make up a story. I want to see the evidence.”
She pulled her hand back.
“Back then, Re Lei Mi had arranged things so airtight that in this entire world there may have been only three people who knew the truth, and two of them are already dead. Whatever the people at this trial think of me, whatever the whole world thinks—even if they truly sentence me to death—I don’t want you to be disappointed in me. Everything I’ve ever told you about the reserve is the truth.”
Wei Lai grasped at every possibility he could think of. “There must still be evidence. Re Lei Mi was in contact with the perpetrators. Maybe the other side…”
No—that would only prove Re Lei Mi was an accomplice. Others could simply argue he was acting on orders, and the mastermind behind it all was still Cen Jin.
His mind raced. “That night at the edge of the forest, Re Lei Mi was threatening you—the soldiers stationed there could testify. As long as I can find even one of them…”
Cen Jin said quietly: “When the liberation front pushed back through the city, the perpetrators still remaining had either fled in haste or fought to the last. The handful stationed at the river—I heard they were wiped out to a man. Do you think that in all these years, I haven’t carefully thought through every possible avenue for finding evidence?”
Wei Lai asked: “Did you kill Re Lei Mi?”
Cen Jin answered: “If one weren’t driven to the absolute edge, who would take such a desperate gamble? So my hands aren’t entirely clean either. If in the end I have to pay with my life, it wouldn’t be entirely unjust.”
---
Back in the room, Ke Ke Shu was on the satellite phone with Mi Lu. Seeing him come in, he held it out. “Want to say a few words?”
Wei Lai couldn’t summon the energy. “Put it on speaker. I’ll listen.”
He lay down in the bed. The board was fairly hard. He suddenly craved a mattress so soft he could sink into it entirely, cocooning himself.
Ke Ke Shu put it on speaker.
Mi Lu’s voice came through: “I checked for you. Do you remember me telling you that when Re Lei Mi died, his safe was found wide open? It isn’t clear what was taken, but police reviewed his account records—he had previously withdrawn five hundred thousand US dollars, and that’s most likely what went missing.”
“Also, the sudden shift in Miss Cen’s writing style—that was three years ago.”
Three years ago. So many things happened three years ago: the return to Ka Long, Re Lei Mi’s murder, the shift in style, even the emergence of the Hand of God…
Wei Lai had an indistinct sense that there was an invisible but critical thread, connecting all of these things, all of it traced back three years ago.
“Get me the specific dates. Not this rough. I need a sequence—who came first and who came after.”
Ke Ke Shu said: “Does that really matter?”
Wei Lai said: “I throw your shark’s jaw out the door first, and then you run out to get it—what do you think just happened?”
Ke Ke Shu immediately turned wary, his body instinctively shifting to block the shark’s jaw hanging at the head of the bed. “Obviously you’re being unreasonable and I’m furious!”
Wei Lai said: “Now, if you run out first, and then I throw your shark’s jaw out—what do you think happened then?”
Ke Ke Shu’s eyes darted about. That was harder to say. “Could be that I punched you first and then ran, and in a fit of anger you threw the shark’s jaw at me. Could also be that you were the one throwing it for me. Depends on the circumstances.”
Wei Lai said: “Exactly. Who came first and who came after—that’s the whole difference.”
Ke Ke Shu went quiet.
Mi Lu sighed from the other end. “Wei, Ke Ke Shu told me everything that happened at the trial. You’re at a dead end and you still won’t let it go?”
Wei Lai smiled and asked him: “Still studying idioms?”
“Of course I am.” The mere mention of idioms lit Mi Lu up. “I like those kinds, like ‘three by three, two by two,’ ‘up and up, down and down,’ ‘seven by seven, eight by eight.’ All the other ones are so hard.”
Wei Lai said: “Flip a few more pages. Maybe you haven’t gotten to it yet. There should be one—I think it’s called ‘finding life at the end of all roads.'”
He was at the end of all roads. All he lacked now was the “finding life” part.
In a flash, Wei Lai suddenly sat bolt upright.
En Nu!
Cen Jin had said Re Lei Mi had arranged things so airtight that only three people in the world knew the truth. En Nu couldn’t have been at the reserve at the time—if he had been, the media would long since have excavated that Si Yue Jian Shi – Chapter of his life. So why was En Nu able to produce an informant’s letter identifying the secret of the reserve, and even supply a complete name list?
---
Dao Ba refused to let Wei Lai see En Nu.
He said coldly: “Mr. Wei, you could kill me and I wouldn’t mind. But if something happened to Mr. En Nu, that is not something I could be held responsible for. Not only because of the Hand of God—Mr. En Nu has been called ‘Ka Long’s Star of Tomorrow’ by no small number of media outlets. There are so many important matters that depend on him to advance. I cannot allow him to be exposed to even the slightest risk. Not at all. Absolutely not.”
Wei Lai kept his voice as level as he could. “I only want to talk to him. I’m not going there to cause trouble.”