Seeing Shi Ting and Yan Qing enter, Long Yunxiao pressed his cigarette out in the ashtray and rose to his feet.

“Please follow me.” He walked ahead to lead them. The familiar scent of formaldehyde reached Yan Qing — she had entered this room before. It was the one where Shu Banxue’s body had been kept inside a glass container.

The glass vessel was still there, but it now stood empty. In its place, a platform had been added nearby, and Shu Banxue’s body lay upon it, draped from head to toe in a clean white sheet.

Free of the preservation fluid with its unpleasant smell, the woman on the platform lay with eyes closed, her face pale and still, her damp hair fanned out across both sides of a face no larger than a palm.

Long Yunxiao had placed a small offering table at the head of the deceased. On the table sat an incense burner, and seeing that the incense had nearly burned away, he took out a fresh stick, lit it, and pressed it into the holder.

Yan Qing asked, “Mr. Long, could you please tell me about Miss Shu’s condition before her passing?”

Long Yunxiao finished tending to the incense and turned around, his gaze settling on that still, lifeless face. “Banxue suffered from epilepsy, though her episodes were infrequent.”

“Had you witnessed one of her episodes?”

“Yes.” Long Yunxiao said, “When she had a seizure, she would foam at the mouth, convulse throughout her entire body, and sometimes bite her own tongue. After each episode, she would lose consciousness — sometimes for a day, sometimes for several days. When she woke, she had no memory at all of what had happened during the seizure.”

“Epilepsy most commonly presents in childhood. At what age did Miss Shu first develop the condition?”

“Three years old. She ran a high fever at three and did not receive timely treatment — that left the lasting damage. After she grew up, she took medication consistently, and the condition was fairly well managed.”

“When was her last episode?”

“October of last year.”

“Were you present at the time?”

Long Yunxiao shook his head. “She lived in an apartment on Kaishan Road, attended by a maidservant named Tian Lan. In the months leading up to that point, she had gone half a year without a single episode, and her doctor said her recovery was progressing well — that if she continued as she was, the frequency of future episodes would gradually decrease.”

Long Yunxiao paused, and in the depths of his eyes there was a plain and unmistakable regret. “On the ninth of October, Tian Lan telephoned me to say that Banxue had had a seizure. I was in Taishan County at the time and could not return immediately, so I instructed Tian Lan to take Banxue to the hospital at once, while I bought the earliest train ticket I could. By the time I arrived in Shun Cheng, all I found was Banxue’s body.”

“If you were already aware that Miss Shu had epilepsy, and that she died during an episode, what has now made you question the cause of her death?”

“I’m not sure I can say.” Long Yunxiao sighed. “After her death, guilt prevented me from consigning her to the ground. A friend told me that formaldehyde could preserve a body from decay, and so I used it to protect her. Whenever I sit here and look at her, I always feel as though she has something she wants to tell me. In my dreams I see her — she says she did not want to die. She says she wanted to live.”

Shi Ting moved a step closer. “So in fact you have no evidence at all — only instinct telling you that something about her death is wrong?”

“That about sums it up.” Long Yunxiao did not deny it. “That is precisely why I did not go to the Military Police Directorate. On the one hand, I could not be certain whether Banxue had truly been killed; on the other, because of her condition, she had an extreme aversion to contact with strangers. I did not want her to be exposed, stripped bare under the scrutiny of unfamiliar eyes in death. When I heard from Long Yue of Miss Yan’s abilities, I thought to ask for her help. But when she raised the matter of an autopsy, I hesitated.”

“And what changed your mind?”

“I want to understand the cause of Banxue’s death as quickly as possible. If she died from an epileptic episode, I want her to be laid to rest in peace. If she died a wrongful death, I will find whoever is responsible and make them pay.”

Shi Ting looked at him with a level, measured gaze. “Yan Qing and I can help you with this — provided you are holding nothing back from us.”

“Holding something back?”

“Your true relationship with Shu Banxue, for instance.” Shi Ting said. “On the surface, you and Shu Banxue appear very much to have been lovers — a lover dies suddenly, and Mr. Long, grief-stricken and unable to bear it, preserves her body to ease the longing of separation. Yet from what I observed just now, the emotion Mr. Long displayed most when speaking of her was guilt — not love. The way you look at Shu Banxue is absolutely not the way a man looks at the woman who holds his heart.”

Long Yunxiao seemed genuinely surprised, though he quickly gave a quiet, self-deprecating laugh. “It seems I cannot hide anything from Director Shi.”

“You weren’t lovers?” Yan Qing was taken aback — so her initial assessment had been wrong.

“We were, once.” Long Yunxiao’s expression darkened, and his gaze turned complicated. “Perhaps Miss Yan has come across this kind of story in some novel — where two people who began as lovers discovered they were, in fact, siblings.”

Shi Ting and Yan Qing exchanged a glance, both genuinely shaken.

Yan Qing had not expected such a dramatic turn of events to have unfolded in Long Yunxiao’s own life. Yet upon reflection, this was an era in which men kept multiple wives and concubines, and wandered freely in their pleasures — who knew when or where a man might leave behind an unintended child.

“I first came to know Banxue through a painting. At the time, that painting hung alone at an exhibition, with no one to admire it, no one stopping to look. To everyone else, it was nothing but chaos and confusion — incomprehensible. But in it, I saw loneliness, rejection, and longing. Banxue was deeply moved. She told me that of all the people who had ever seen her paintings, I was the only one who had ever truly understood her. Our meetings at first were infrequent, but as time passed and circumstances drew us together more often, I found myself gradually drawn in by her talent and her character. It was only natural that we came together.”

Yan Qing could already predict how the story would continue. She even felt a flicker of sympathy for this man who carried himself with such high authority.

“She had long been searching for her birth father. Her only token was a jade pendant, broken in half. I worked quietly in the background to help her fulfill that wish — and in doing so, I found the other half of the pendant among my father’s belongings. In his diary, my father wrote that he had once loved a woman who lived in a pleasure house. They spent three months together, and then he left for another city and never went back.”

Long Yunxiao gave a quiet sigh. “At the time, I told myself: this secret exists only in my knowledge. As long as I never tell another soul, no one will ever know that she is my blood sister. And so I continued as we were, heedless of everything else. But as time went on, the weight of guilt grew heavier and heavier, until gradually I could no longer think of her as a lover.”

“Yet you still did not separate from her — is that right?”

Long Yunxiao nodded. “I thought to myself — so be it. To live out my days this way would not be so bad.”

“Does Long Yue know of this?”

“She does not.”

“Miss Shu would also be her sister — half-sister, I imagine.”

“Yes.”

“And Miss Shu died never knowing that you were her blood brother?”

“I never told her. I had made up my mind to continue living with her as we were — even without the name of lovers.”

“In truth, by the end, you thought of her only as a sister — isn’t that so?”

“Yes.” Long Yunxiao gave a bitter smile. “I had not yet sunk so low as to knowingly continue with my own sister — though I will admit there was a time when I considered it. But in the end, reason prevailed over feeling.”

“I understand.” Yan Qing put on her face mask. “Would the two of you please step outside? I will call you if I need assistance.”

Shi Ting and Long Yunxiao withdrew from the room and closed the door.

Yan Qing donned her autopsy gown and gave a slight bow of the head toward the deceased. This woman of delicate features — had she lived, her paintings would surely one day have been known throughout the world.

Yan Qing put on her gloves, took up her flashlight, and examined the deceased’s eyes and mouth.

When that was done, she picked up the scalpel and made a practiced incision through the skin and flesh.

Shu Banxue was of slender build — the blade met almost no resistance before bone could be sensed beneath. When her trachea was opened, a quantity of pale pink, blood-tinged foam welled up from within.

The presence of that foam made Yan Qing’s brow furrow slightly.

She continued her examination of the deceased’s internal organs, finding that the lungs, kidneys, liver, and spleen were all in a state of congestion.

When she opened the stomach, fluid seeped out. After clearing it away, she noticed patches of hemorrhaging across the stomach lining. She brought out her magnifying glass and examined those bleeding areas with close attention. At the corners of her lips, a quiet, confident smile appeared.

Outside, Long Yunxiao glanced at the clock on the wall. It had been over three hours since Yan Qing had begun the autopsy.

“It should be almost time.” Shi Ting seemed entirely accustomed to the wait.

Long Yunxiao said, “How did Director Shi come to know Miss Yan?”

“At a murder scene.”

“A murder scene?” Long Yunxiao gave a low laugh. “That sounds rather interesting.”

Shi Ting thought back to that chance encounter at the scene of the Chen Family massacre — as though it had been fated from the very beginning. She had entered his life like something wholly unannounced, descending upon him without the slightest warning.

A creak.

The sound of the door pulled Shi Ting back from memory. He rose immediately to meet her.

“How did it go?” Long Yunxiao followed in quick strides, his eyes flickering with barely contained urgency.

Yan Qing had already washed her hands clean and removed her face mask. Her gaze moved from Shi Ting’s face to Long Yunxiao’s.

“Let me first explain the findings of the autopsy.” With no one available to take notes, she had committed everything to memory. “The deceased showed redness at the junction of the right upper eyelid and bulbar conjunctiva, cyanosis of the lip mucosa, and cyanosis of the fingernails on both hands — these are general signs of asphyxia. The lungs, kidneys, liver, and spleen were all congested. The gastric mucosa and the surface of the pancreatic capsule showed punctate and patchy hemorrhages.”

Long Yunxiao listened with great focus, though much of what she said was beyond his understanding.

“Miss Yan, what does all of this indicate?”

Yan Qing explained patiently. “We must first consider epilepsy as a cause of death. Though an epileptic seizure can be a frightening thing to witness, epilepsy itself has a relatively low fatality rate — with timely treatment and management at the onset of a seizure, it does not usually pose a threat to life. Deaths attributable to epilepsy, aside from accidents occurring during a loss of consciousness and sudden deaths resulting from secondary complications, may also occur through what is called status epilepticus. In such cases, the episode can persist for ten hours or more, and the patient may ultimately die of generalized organ failure brought on by oxygen deprivation and ischemic brain damage.”

“So — did Banxue die from status epilepticus?”

—