The next day at noon, Xiu Lan Residence set aside two meeting rooms—one as a waiting area and one for interviews.

The young man liaising with Jiang Lian was named Xu Keyong. He was responsible for inviting those who had gone to help during the crematorium fire, including the family members of the deceased, to participate in the interviews.

Finding these people wasn’t difficult; the challenge was getting them to set aside their affairs and cooperate. Fortunately, with the Mountain Spirits’ involvement and the promise of substantial compensation, people became much more cooperative for the money. Two of them had even taken time off work to come.

Before the interviews began, Jiang Lian took a look at the waiting area. What he saw evoked many feelings: these people had once been neighbors living near the crematorium, but over the past twenty-plus years, their lives had diverged significantly. Some wore gold and silver accessories and branded clothing; to show off to their old neighbors, they had specially styled their hair and applied perfume. Others dressed modestly; perhaps accustomed to serving others, they wore perpetually subservient smiles. Still others disdained such comparisons, sitting alone in the corner, looking at their phones, oblivious to those around them.

If people couldn’t let go of the desire to compare themselves with others, life would be exhausting—like living in a perpetual class reunion.

Jiang Lian then went to the interview room.

This room, frequently rented to marketing companies for research, had a one-way mirror separating an observation area. Meng Qianzi had already arrived and was sitting alone in the observation area, bored and occasionally lost in thought.

Jiang Lian went over and sat beside her. “Have you called Grand Aunt?”

He hadn’t seen her all morning; apparently, she had been busy reporting the situation to Shangui Studio.

Meng Qianzi nodded, seemingly dispirited, “Grand Aunt was very shocked to hear that Grandmother’s death might have involved hidden circumstances.”

This was understandable. Gao Jinghong had been raised by Grandmother Duan. If Grandmother Duan had died in a natural disaster, though unfortunate, it would have been somewhat acceptable. But if she had died from revenge or even murder, and the younger generation hadn’t realized it for nearly half a century, that would be agonizing.

Jiang Lian thought for a moment, “When Grandmother Duan had her accident, didn’t your family organize a search party at the time?”

Meng Qianzi smiled bitterly, “Of course, we searched. But firstly, the Kunlun Mountains are vast; secondly, that era was sensitive, and we couldn’t mobilize too many people, fearing it would attract attention from relevant authorities.”

That made sense. Grandmother Duan casually giving a foreign candy had made a seven or eight-year-old child suspect her of being a “foreign spy.” If they had made a grand display and deployed significant manpower, who knows what incidents might have arisen?

Jiang Lian sighed, “If only Grandmother Duan had brought more of her people when entering the Kunlun Mountains.”

Meng Qianzi shook her head, “It’s not that she didn’t bring anyone; she left them behind. My Grandmother Duan was never one to follow conventional rules and preferred to go alone. As her juniors, we really couldn’t stop her. On that trip to Guangxi, she had just undergone surgery and wasn’t in the best physical condition, so once in Guangxi, she had to accept many people accompanying her along the way, surrounding her front and back. Grand Aunt said that even so, Grandmother still deliberately avoided her companions several times and briefly ‘disappeared.'”

At the time, they had thought Duan Wenxi was simply being independent, but looking back now, they gradually began to appreciate the significance: could those brief “disappearances” have been meetings with Lord Yama?

Jiang Lian’s mind stirred, “Surgery? Was Grandmother in poor health?”

Meng Qianzi sighed wistfully, “At that age, it’s inevitable. After surgery, the elderly especially miss the days when they could move freely without restrictions. She often talked about her overseas travels and world tours in the past, and gradually… my Grand Aunt and the others prepared themselves mentally.”

Gao Jinghong had always felt that Duan Wenxi’s disappearance following an avalanche befitted the legendary ending of a legendary figure—leaving a lingering resonance, suitable for future generations to recount.

So when they received this tragic news at the time, amidst the grief, there was some consolation: she didn’t want to see this Grandmother Duan die in bed, to be prepared for burial like an ordinary deceased, collected and interred. To be lost in the snow of the Kunlun Mountains was, in a way, an elegant departure.

Perhaps it was precisely because of this that the search back then wasn’t so meticulous.

The interviews began at two in the afternoon. Xu Keyong took the lead; in his words, they were professionals at this kind of standard questioning. He wore an earpiece, allowing Meng Qianzi, Jiang Lian, and Shen Gun to cut in at any time to control the pace and content of the interview.

Shen Gun, participating in such an event for the first time, was inexplicably excited and highly praised the function of the one-way mirror: he could see the people on the other side, but they couldn’t see him—how magical!

Jiang Lian deflated him, “What’s so magical about it? It’s standard equipment in research companies. Have you been disconnected from ordinary life for too long, living only in legendary stories?”

That single sentence left Shen Gun speechless. After saying it, Jiang Lian also felt reflective: though Shen Gun frequently traveled between cities, his heart wasn’t here, so he viewed many ordinary things as if looking through a kaleidoscope.

Where the heart is, that’s where one truly lives. Is that statement perhaps too idealistic?

…

The first to enter was the woman Jiang Lian had noticed earlier—the one who had styled her hair and applied perfume. She was probably a wealthy housewife now, extremely bored and naturally enthusiastic about many things. She eagerly questioned Xu Keyong, “Why are you investigating something from so long ago? Was there a misjudgment back then? Are you reopening the case?”

Xu Keyong reassured her, “Today’s meeting is just to reconstruct the scene at that time; it has nothing to do with reopening the case. We’re not the police. You don’t need to feel pressured; just relax and try to recall if there was anything that seemed unusual to you that night. You can say anything—speak freely.”

As he spoke, he pushed a plate of chocolates toward her.

The woman unwrapped one and put it in her mouth. Sweet food indeed helped people relax. As she chewed, she spoke indistinctly, “Of course, something was off. That Chen, Chen…”

Xu Keyong reminded her, “Chen Dafei.”

“Right, right, Dafei,” the woman unwrapped another chocolate. With her mouth still full, she held it in her hand. Dafei was dissatisfied with the leadership and had his wages docked. He had complained, saying that sooner or later he would burn the wretched place down. But he had also said that working at the crematorium had no future, that he wanted to go into business and make big money. If he had decided to make big money, why would he burn down the crematorium? Isn’t that contradictory? Arson is a crime. Why bother? And he even lost his life in the process.”

She put the unwrapped chocolate in her mouth and grabbed another.

Jiang Lian moved the microphone away from his mouth and leaned close to Meng Qianzi. “I don’t think we prepared enough chocolates.”

Meng Qianzi was both irritated and amused. She covered her microphone and gave him a sidelong glance, “Isn’t your focus a bit off?”

Jiang Lian obediently moved back and repositioned his microphone, just smiling at her. Beside them, Shen Gun, annoyed by their chatter, glared at them angrily, “Focus!”

The two weren’t intimidated by his reprimand, but Xu Keyong in the other room was startled, thinking the clients found his questioning insufficiently focused, and became even more attentive.

He cleared his throat lightly. “So, you think the arsonist might not have been him?”

The woman waved her hands repeatedly, “No, no, the arsonist was him. I heard from my husband that the gasoline was taken by Dafei from a farm vehicle parked in the yard. There were his fingerprints all around the fuel outlet. The police work based on evidence; we can’t randomly doubt that.”

Jiang Lian’s eyes flickered slightly.

Interesting. He picked up the paper and pen from the table in front of him and wrote: Chen Dafei set the fire.

Xu Keyong asked the woman, “What else?”

“Well…”

The woman frowned, “I always felt that Dafei wasn’t in his right mind at the time.”

Xu Keyong pressed, “In what way wasn’t he normal?”

“At that time, the fire was burning too intensely. We were using basins and ladles to fetch water, which wasn’t very effective. We could hear Dafei screaming for help inside, and we were anxious. So we shouted, telling him to find a blanket or something and rush out…”

At this point, she straightened her back, “Officer… no, Mr. Xu, I still believe that if Dafei had listened to me and rushed out, he absolutely wouldn’t have been burned to death—at most, he would have been burned. Don’t you think? In such a situation, you can’t hesitate or fear pain; you just have to rush out…”

She must have given this statement to the police during their investigation back then. Surprisingly, after so many years, she still spoke about it with such enthusiasm. Xu Keyong had to interrupt her, “So why didn’t Dafei rush out at that time?”

“Exactly!” The woman became excited again, “He was just crying and howling. You know, although the fire was burning fiercely, you could still vaguely see a figure. I saw him as a soulless person inside, crying and wailing. So many people were shouting for him to rush out, but he was just turning around in circles inside like a headless fly. Later, I couldn’t bear to watch; his cries were too pitiful. So I turned my head, and I just…”

Suddenly, she paused.

Xu Keyong pressed, “You just what?”

The woman came to her senses, “I just couldn’t bear to watch…”

Meng Qianzi gripped the microphone, her eyes fixed on the two people in the room. Seeing that Xu Keyong was about to continue questioning, a spark flashed in her mind, and she blurted out, “No, her reaction isn’t right. Continue with the previous question. She turned her head, and then what happened?”

Xu Keyong dutifully relayed the question, “You turned your head, and then what happened?”

The woman looked bewildered, “Didn’t I say? I couldn’t bear to watch; it was too tragic.”

Meng Qianzi said, “Ask her if she saw something when she turned her head.”

Xu Keyong relayed the question again.

The woman replied, “What else could I see? I saw a person. At that time, weren’t we all there to fight the fire? People were standing scattered, and when I turned my head, I saw someone.”

Xu Keyong casually asked, “Who was that person? Male or female?”

The woman shook her head, “I don’t know who it was. Judging by the frame and build, it should have been a man. Back then, the crematorium was in a remote location with no lights around. Even though there was a fire burning, you know how fires flicker back and forth, making it very dark. So if you stood a bit far away, you couldn’t see clearly.”

Jiang Lian found it strange and leaned close to Meng Qianzi, “What’s wrong?”

Meng Qianzi muttered, “The woman paused earlier, and it was strange.”

Shen Gun, eager to continue listening, interjected, “Maybe she was recalling the scene from back then, feeling upset, so she paused?”

Meng Qianzi didn’t think so. After some thought, she instructed Xu Keyong again, “Ask her if she felt something was wrong when she saw that person. Guide her a bit, help her think. She must have some awareness, but hasn’t realized it herself.”

Xu Keyong was completely baffled, but since it was the client’s request, he had to comply. The woman was also confused by his questions and kept repeating, “There was something off, but I just glanced briefly before my attention went back. If you ask me what was wrong, I don’t know either. It’s just that I felt he was different from us somehow…”

Xu Keyong asked her, “Different in what way?”

The woman became frustrated, “I can’t remember!”

Xu Keyong was sweating profusely, feeling increasingly agitated, when Jiang Lian’s voice came through the earpiece, “Ask more specifically. What aspect was different—was it the build, the clothes worn, or what they were holding? Give her options.”

This approach proved effective. The woman listened intently, then suddenly slapped her thigh, “I remember now! It was the basin! That person had no basin in his hands!”

She hurriedly explained, “When we heard about the fire, we all grabbed something to help fight it. No one went empty-handed just to watch. Even I, a woman, brought a bucket of water. No wonder I always felt that person was strange—he had nothing in his hands, and nothing at his feet either…”

At this point, she muttered to herself, “Who was that? How could they go empty-handed?”

…

Jiang Lian wrote two more sentences on the paper.

The second sentence was: Chen Dafei’s mental state seemed to have problems at that time.

The third sentence was: There seemed to be a strange man at the fire scene.

After writing, he turned to look at Meng Qianzi, “Well done.”

Thanks to her persistence in pursuing the woman’s “pause,” they had indeed uncovered something.

Meng Qianzi appeared nonchalant, “It’s nothing, just a woman’s intuition.”

In the interview room, the woman’s part was evidently over. As she stood up to leave, she didn’t forget to grab one more chocolate.

Jiang Lian instructed Xu Keyong, “For the people coming in next, follow this routine. Additionally, there are three essential questions: One, did anyone feel that Chen Dafei’s mental state was abnormal at that time? Two, did they all bring firefighting tools when they went out to fight the fire? Three, did anyone, like this woman, see a man empty-handed?”

With a clear focus, the subsequent inquiries went much more smoothly.

Six or seven households lived near the crematorium, mostly young couples. When the fire broke out, the adults went to fight it, leaving the children locked at home. Everyone who rushed over was either carrying a basin or a bucket; no one was empty-handed.

Besides the first woman, no one had noticed any empty-handed man. As one man with a large pompadour said, “There’s a fire over there, and someone’s being burned to death. If it were you, would you have the mind to look at anything else? Not to be rude, but I didn’t even notice who was fighting the fire alongside me.”

However, more than half of the people believed that Chen Dafei’s mental state was problematic at that time.

The pompadour man used harsher words: “He was simply mad, mentally disturbed.”

He swore that while fighting the fire, he heard Chen Dafei cry out wailing, “It… It’s grabbing my foot.”

Xu Keyong asked, “Did you tell the police during their investigation back then?”

The pompadour man replied, “Of course I did. Cooperating with the police, naturally, I had to tell them. We all thought that he had been frightened by the massive fire, gone crazy, and was hallucinating. Who could grab his foot? Were the dead coming back to life? This fire wasn’t like the cremation furnace; it couldn’t burn people completely clean. The crematorium had registered several corpses, and several charred bones were found at the scene, all accounted for. Even if the dead could come back to life, they would have been burned stiff.”

Jiang Lian crossed out the words “mental state seemed to have problems” in the second sentence and changed it to “frightened, went mad.”

The last person to be interviewed was Chen Dafei’s wife, Mao Qiuxia.

Mao Qiuxia had remarried but wasn’t living well. Not yet fifty, half of her hair had already turned white.

This time, Jiang Lian replaced Xu Keyong and conducted the interview himself.

He asked Mao Qiuxia, “Did Chen Dafei ever have any mental issues?”

Mao Qiuxia didn’t understand, “Are you asking if he had problems with his mind? No, absolutely not. He was just sometimes a bit irritable and would clash with leadership.”

“How was his courage?”

Mao Qiuxia smiled, “The way you ask… my husband…”

At this point, she suddenly seemed to remember that she had remarried, and her neck turned red with embarrassment. “Dafei was very brave. Think about it—working at a crematorium, moving and carrying the dead, and he often took night shifts alone. If he didn’t have courage, how could he do that…”

…

Watching Jiang Lian from behind the one-way mirror felt different, probably because she could look at him unrestrainedly while he couldn’t see her. Meng Qianzi watched, occasionally afraid of being discovered, vigilantly glancing at Shen Gun beside her. However, Shen Gun was deeply focused, his expression serious, continuously staring at the interview scene; from beginning to end, he hadn’t noticed her small thoughts.

…

After the irrelevant people were sent away, only the three of them remained in the interview room.

The three sat around the interview table. Meng Qianzi casually unwrapped a chocolate and put it in her mouth. Suddenly remembering Jiang Lian’s earlier quip about the chocolates, she glanced at him and indeed saw him looking at the foil in her hand. She immediately felt that eating chocolate was inappropriate at this moment, but spitting it out would be even more unsuitable. So, fully committed to her decision, she grabbed another chocolate.

Jiang Lian pushed over the paper with the three sentences, “If the information we received today is true, then we should be able to reconstruct a story of what happened at the scene.”

He pondered for a moment, carefully choosing his words.

“Chen Dafei was on night duty at the crematorium that evening. Something strange might have happened, so he went to get gasoline from the farm vehicle, probably intending to burn something.”

Meng Qianzi asked curiously, “But he worked at the crematorium, where there was a ready-made incinerator. If he wanted to burn something, why go to the trouble of getting gasoline?”

Jiang Lian nodded, “That’s indeed a questionable point. I suspect that using the incinerator would mean he’d have to move the item to the furnace opening, but he didn’t dare to move it. That’s why he resorted to using gasoline, which explains why his handprints and fingerprints were all over the fuel tank of that vehicle.”

“In other words, he did intend to set a fire, but after returning with the gasoline, something happened.”

Shen Gun interjected, “Something was trying to grab his foot… could it have been the dead coming back to life?”

Jiang Lian thought for a moment, then slowly shook his head, “Given Chen Dafei’s courage, I think even if the dead were coming back to life, it wouldn’t have driven him mad. I believe what happened at that time must have been more terrifying than the dead coming back to life.”

What in this world could be more terrifying than the dead coming back to life? Meng Qianzi couldn’t imagine.

Jiang Lian continued, “Chen Dafei was frightened mad at that time and probably accidentally started the fire then, but…”

Something didn’t make sense. It was like building with blocks—everything seemed to fit smoothly until the very end, when two extra pieces appeared.

These two extra pieces were Lord Yama and the mysterious man.

Thinking along supernatural lines, that mysterious man could have been Lord Yama coming back to life. But resurrection might frighten Chen Dafei to the point of wetting himself, not to the point of madness. Moreover, the pompadour man had stated clearly that apart from Chen Dafei, the crematorium had registered several corpses, and the same number of charred bones were found at the scene. If Lord Yama had resurrected and fled, shouldn’t there have been one fewer set of charred bones? If Lord Yama had resurrected and then somehow procured another corpse to make up the numbers and cover his tracks, wasn’t that a bit too swift?

And if that mysterious man wasn’t Lord Yama, and Lord Yama hadn’t been resurrected, then what had frightened Chen Dafei to madness, and why was the mysterious man standing nearby observing?