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.”

Dao Ba shrugged. “You can’t convince me. I don’t trust you.”

Wei Lai was genuinely at a loss. “He has all those bodyguards!”

“No number of bodyguards can guarantee absolute safety. You go in to ‘talk,’ the conversation is halfway through, and suddenly you act—what if his bodyguards don’t react in time?”

Wei Lai suppressed his frustration. After a pause, he held out both hands. “Then handcuff me. Or tie me. Have someone hold a gun on me as I go in. I’ll sit across a table from him. That works, doesn’t it?”

Dao Ba went quiet.

After a moment he said: “I’ll go and ask Mr. En Nu’s opinion.”

Wei Lai said: “You’d better. The great ‘Star of Tomorrow,’ and he can’t even bring himself to meet a man who’s bound and held at gunpoint? I’d have serious doubts about the wisdom of entrusting tomorrow to someone like that.”

As it turned out, the “Star of Tomorrow” possessed a degree of courage after all.

Half an hour later, Wei Lai was taken to Mr. En Nu’s room—without handcuffs, without a gun at his back.

Mr. En Nu was staying in the more secluded rear section of the sanatorium, in what was probably the only suite in the entire complex: an outer room for the bodyguards. Calling it “all those bodyguards” was an exaggeration—there were three in total.

Mr. En Nu occupied the inner room. When Wei Lai entered, he was seated behind a desk, brow furrowed, reviewing documents spread before him. Wei Lai took a seat across the desk and saw the recorder, letters, photographs, and diary from the trial, along with other stacked documents not disclosed in open proceedings.

A high official with no apparent connection to Cen Jin—unless it had a close bearing on his personal interests, why would he be paying such close attention to this case?

En Nu looked up. “Mr. Wei?”

“Yes.”

“I understand you are Miss Cen’s bodyguard—and that the two of you are quite close?”

“Yes.”

En Nu smiled. “Young man, one ought to keep a clear sense of right and wrong. Don’t let emotion cloud your judgment.”

En Nu was actually squarely in his prime—anything but old—yet “young man” fell out of his mouth with easy familiarity. Being in a position of authority for long enough probably made it second nature to offer guidance and pronouncements.

Wei Lai had no patience for pleasantries. “What is your connection to that reserve? Did you have important family or friends who stayed there?”

En Nu shook his head. “Neither.”

“Then how did you come to have the informant’s letter and the name list?”

Only then did En Nu realize that Wei Lai had taken him for the “important figure.” “I received it. It was only at that point that I learned how deep the waters of that reserve ran. Re Lei Mi at the time, mind you, was the favored guest of the Ka Long government.”

“Who gave it to you? And why, the moment you received it, did you begin to suspect Re Lei Mi—you said yourself he was a favored guest. Surely the normal procedure would be to verify the informant first?”

En Nu smiled. “I’m sorry. That I cannot disclose. I can only tell you that the informant’s letter came from someone I greatly respect, am deeply grateful to, and who is of great importance to me—so there was no need to verify. No matter how well-connected Re Lei Mi was in Ka Long, I was prepared to go and question him. The results of the investigation, as you’ve seen, were deeply shocking.”

Wei Lai refused to give up. “Can I meet this person? There were only three people who knew the truth about the reserve. This person is a fourth, and perhaps if I meet them and learn more about the circumstances, there’s a chance things could take a turn.”

En Nu smiled, his gaze drifting with what appeared to be casual intent over every piece of evidence on the desk, a faint contempt entering his tone. “A turn?”

He had no further interest in conversation. He signaled to a bodyguard to show Wei Lai out.

At the instant Wei Lai crossed the threshold, Dao Ba looked toward En Nu. En Nu gave a slight shake of his head.

Dao Ba’s expression remained unchanged. He accompanied Wei Lai back to his room, and at the door said: “Tomorrow morning at ten, the verdict will be announced.”

Even knowing the verdict would bring no good news—would not be as he hoped—Wei Lai was still taut with anxiety, as if braced for an unknown result.

Later in the evening, Mi Lu called back with a rough timeline.

In summary: the third anniversary of the April Calamity came first, and both Re Lei Mi and Cen Jin returned to Ka Long.

Then came Re Lei Mi’s murder in France. The emergence of the Hand of God and Re Lei Mi’s death were very close together—impossible to say which came first, though logic suggested it came after—because building the reputation of an organization truly does take time.

Then came the sudden shift in Cen Jin’s social commentary style. In Mi Lu’s words: before, she wrote like someone having bread and milk for breakfast; after, like someone biting on bullets—firing relentlessly, without concern for who she offended.

What did this sequence want to tell him? Or was he simply a drowning man, making a dying struggle, uselessly clutching at nothing but the froth on the surface of the waves?

Wei Lai was anxious enough to feel short-tempered. He tossed and turned in bed and couldn’t sleep. Only after midnight, when the sound of pattering rain spread across the sky, did he gradually drift off.

The dream was uneasy. It began with upheaval—turbid waves surging to the sky. A smuggling boat tossed in white-crested surf. When Wei Lai fought his way up to the deck, he saw Cen Jin’s easel and drawing paper being scattered by the gale. The flimsy sheets of paper were torn and tossed about the ship in the wind. Each one was numbered. On the drawing paper—face after face of people from Ka Long, sorrowful in expression.

Wei Lai shouted to Cen Jin: “The waves are too high—come over here!”

Cen Jin stood unmoving. The next moment the ship listed, and Cen Jin was thrown onto the deck and rolled toward the railing.

Wei Lai lunged forward, and in the instant her body plunged over the side, he stretched out his arm and seized her hand in a death grip.

Then, suddenly, he realized that the arm he had extended was his left arm.

Something like an electric current ran from his wrist to his elbow. That arm suddenly went beyond his control, trembling without cease. The strength in his hand slowly drained away. Cen Jin’s hand slid gradually from his grip…

Wei Lai jolted awake.

Outside, a torrential downpour, lightning, and thunder—yet he distinctly heard, beneath the dense curtain of rain, the sound of a car engine.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Wei Lai rolled out of bed and moved almost at a dead sprint: there was a faint glimmer of light that flashed and vanished at the bend in the mountain road.

Wei Lai’s mind ignited. The next instant he launched himself to Cen Jin’s door. Two guards came to intercept him; he seized one by the back of the neck and slammed him hard into the other, knocking both of them into a heap. Then he kicked the door open and hit the light.

The bedding on the bed was in disarray. But the room was empty.

On the table, a gold chain hung half-suspended over the edge. The shell case containing the roughly-made lipstick was half open—the product was visibly lower than before; someone had used it.

Every drop of blood in Wei Lai’s body seemed to have rushed to his head. Behind him came the sound of footsteps. He turned.

It was Dao Ba—clearly back from out in the rain, half-drenched—who said: “Mr. Wei…”

Wei Lai didn’t let him finish. Like an enraged lion, he launched himself forward and knocked Dao Ba flat on the ground, one hand clamping hard around his throat.

“Where is she?”

Dao Ba forced the words out with difficulty. “Trans… transferred.”

“Transferred, or taken to be executed?”

Dao Ba didn’t answer. Instead, he began to laugh. Wei Lai was so furious he nearly ground his teeth to dust, and he brought his fist down hard against the side of Dao Ba’s face.

Dao Ba’s mouth was bleeding. Between broken laughs he said: “That’s exactly… exactly this kind of situation we were afraid of—that’s why we transferred her in advance. Looks like… we were right to.”

Wei Lai grabbed him by the collar and hauled him upright. “You said the verdict would be announced tomorrow morning at ten!”

Dao Ba said in halting fragments: “It… it will. Tomorrow at ten we will announce the verdict—we didn’t… didn’t deceive you. But the outcome from the trial session—that was decided the moment the session ended…”

“Get the car back. Is there a radio in the car? Call them back!”

Dao Ba turned his head and spat out a mouthful of blood. “That’s… not my authority.”

Wei Lai said: “Fine. You asked for this. Remember that—you asked for this.”

He left Dao Ba where he was and walked out.

Dao Ba pressed a hand to his throat, struggled to sit up. There was the sound of hurried footsteps from outside, then Ke Ke Shu poked his head through the door, one arm still threading through his shirt. “Where’s Wei—I heard him get up, and in a blink he’s gone?”

Dao Ba looked at Ke Ke Shu. His color suddenly drained. He rasped out in a raw voice: “Mr. En Nu—quickly—Mr. En Nu!”

Wei Lai’s eyes were bloodshot, but his mind was clear.

When he reached the rear section, he slowed his steps and paused at the door first, listening for movement inside.

All bodyguards. With this kind of three-person close protection in an outer and inner suite, there should be one on overnight watch and two resting. When he had met with En Nu earlier, he had observed the layout of the room—he had a rough sense of how the three men would be positioned and where they would stand, and how they would react in a sudden situation.

Three against one. The odds were badly against him. He absolutely could not let it drag on. If he hadn’t gained the upper hand within five seconds, the outcome would be grim.

Wei Lai clenched his jaw. With a sudden kick, the door slammed open—and in that instant he threw himself into a sharp backward fall, his back to the floor, sliding rapidly into the room.

At the same moment, a shot rang out. The flash from the barrel gave away the position of the gun. Wei Lai fixed the stance in his mind, and with brutal speed he shot out both hands—using the momentum of his slide—and seized both men on either side by the ankles, pulling hard. They went down. Then he bellowed: “Ke Ke Shu—fire!”

The third man flinched. Wei Lai seized on that split second’s opening, rammed through the inner door, and rolled inside.

The shooting stopped. About half a minute passed. The lights came on one by one.

The inner door swung half-open. One of the bodyguards hesitated, considering moving closer.

Wei Lai’s voice came through: “Take one more step. You want him dead?”

Mi Lu was half-asleep when he heard the phone ring again. Yi Fu turned over and muttered in half-hearted complaint. Mi Lu buried his face in the pillow and pressed the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

After listening for a moment, he suddenly jolted upright.

He asked: “What now?”

Ke Ke Shu said: “He wants the car back. The Ka Long people can’t very well refuse, so it should be fine. The thing is, that En Nu—he’s on the phone now… but what happens next is going to be tricky. He’s a senior official. We can’t afford to antagonize him…”

Mi Lu said: “Wait—he took out three people?”

Ke Ke Shu practically glowed with pride. “Yes! Wei was fast this time—should have been inside ten seconds. Those three—what a useless lot…”

Mi Lu’s mind detonated. He shouted into the phone: “Watch those three!”

Ke Ke Shu snapped to attention immediately.

The bodyguard market in Africa was notoriously chaotic, especially not long after the war—because of ongoing political instability and intermittent internal power struggles, those in authority tended to rely on mercenary-backed security firms, which operated almost like monopolies, one firm controlling the security market for one territory. A single misstep usually meant losing that monopoly.

And so an unwritten rule of compensation had emerged: if a client was killed, taking out the attacker offset part of the blame. If a client was threatened but came through unharmed, taking out the attacker made the incident as though it never happened—and could even earn a bonus reward.

Ke Ke Shu’s eardrums were buzzing with tension. He lifted his head, and before him everything played out like a montage.

——Dao Ba’s face, iron-grey, yet drenched in sweat.

——En Nu holding a phone, apparently dialing.

——Wei Lai standing before the desk, holding his breath.

——And then—one of the three bodyguards suddenly raised his gun.

Ke Ke Shu bellowed: “Wei! Get down!”

He threw himself forward. A dense volley of gunfire erupted, crashing through the air. Before he slammed that man to the ground, he saw Wei Lai dive behind the desk. The desk, the walls—struck in multiple places. Fragments of wall and wood exploded outward. Papers and documents on the desktop were blasted upward, scattering and drifting back down in all directions.

Ke Ke Shu was livid. Without a second thought he brought the man’s skull down hard against the floor, then raised his head, his gaze fierce, sweeping over the remaining two.

The two didn’t dare move.

Ke Ke Shu didn’t dare move either. He stared at the desk, and his voice trembled slightly: “Wei?”

No answer. No sound.

A thin line of blood crept around the base of the desk leg, slowly pooling outward.

The sight blurred before Ke Ke Shu’s eyes. He scrambled forward.

When he got there, he found Wei Lai lying face down. The wound on his shoulder had torn open again, soaking through in a wide dark stain—but his eyes were fixed with fierce intensity on a document lying before him.

It was a letter. Anonymous. An account denouncing the events of the reserve from years ago. At the end, a series of names—those who should be investigated and held responsible for what had happened at the reserve—written out in sequence.

Re Lei Mi. Sai De. Cen Jin.

So Cen Jin’s English name was Silvia.

After the English name, her Chinese name had been noted as well. The character “Jin”—with its habitual stammering stroke—looked like “Ling.”