Like a burning arrow piercing through the heart, Jiang Hansheng was stunned for a moment.

Zhou Jin’s lips moved. Not knowing how to speak without reopening old wounds, she hesitated briefly, then simply reached out and pulled Jiang Hansheng into an embrace.

“Hansheng.”

Zhou Jin’s chin rested against his shoulder. She could feel the back of his neck — cold, damp with sweat.

She said softly, “Investigating the case is something we should be doing. Don’t force yourself.”

Zhou Jin’s fingers moved gently through his hair, the way one might soothe a child.

She had always been this way — a hardened exterior, with something entirely soft packed inside. When that softness was out of reach, you longed for the day you might find it; and when you finally did, it came rushing over you like fine, dry sand — overwhelming, almost suffocating.

Jiang Hansheng was entirely willing to be buried alive in that tenderness.

He closed his eyes and pulled Zhou Jin into a firm embrace in return. Whatever came of it all, he still felt fortunate — at least in this moment, Zhou Jin loved him.

“I’m not forcing myself,” Jiang Hansheng said. “Zhou Jin, I want to try again.”

He repeated what he had said before. This decision had not been made on impulse.

Zhou Jin understood. She said, “Thank you.”

……

Taking advantage of the National Day holiday, a hypnosis investigation specialist from the provincial department received Jiang Hansheng’s email and flew to Haizhou City especially for the occasion.

The hypnotist was escorted inside the Public Security Bureau by a staff member.

Less than half a minute into walking down the corridor, he could already sense the taut undercurrent of tension that permeated every corner of the building. Every officer he passed was moving at a brisk pace, as though carrying out some matter of urgent importance.

As an outsider, he was not in a position to ask questions. He simply observed his surroundings with quiet care.

Passing by a spacious conference hall, his gaze swept briefly inside. A considerable number of people were gathered within.

This was the temporary command center established for the “8·17” Special Task Force.

Inside the command center, Tan Shiming and the others were monitoring activity at the Jingang Wharf.

They had conducted meticulous advance surveillance and deployed a comprehensive containment perimeter around the wharf; snipers had been positioned at elevated vantage points, and elite personnel from the special operations unit and the criminal investigation team had been assembled together to carry out this operation.

For now, the cargo vessel had yet to approach the wharf.

Tan Shiming glanced at the red digits on the display screen, then checked the time on his watch.

5:21 in the afternoon.

Two hours remained before the time of the transaction.

……

A whistled melody drifted through the air.

Light and easy, tracing the notes of a piano piece.

The sea breeze carried it along, sending it dancing lightly into the sound of the waves.

A man wearing dark sunglasses rolled up the cuffs of his trousers with practiced efficiency, his feet clad in a pair of black knee-high boots.

He swung the instrument case behind him up onto his shoulder, picked up a pair of binoculars, and gazed out at the surrounding waters into the sea wind.

……

Guided by the staff member, the hypnotist went up to the third floor and entered the designated room.

Jiang Hansheng was already waiting.

After the two shook hands, the hypnotist stepped forward and offered Jiang Hansheng a hug. “It’s been a long time, Hansheng. You up and left the provincial department back then without so much as a word — and now, after all this time without contact, I find out you’ve reinvented yourself as a university lecturer?”

Jiang Hansheng smiled. “Has work been keeping you busy lately?”

“There hasn’t been a moment’s peace.” He said. “Our department has been running psychological evaluations on police personnel recently — responding to directives from above, paying attention to officers’ mental wellbeing and all that. Oh, and that initiative was actually proposed by your old mentor — Director Wang has made our lives considerably harder this time, not even a day off during the holiday—”

“I’m sorry to have brought you all this way in person,” Jiang Hansheng said.

“Listen to you, talking like a stranger.” He replied. “Back when my daughter was ill, we barely even knew each other — and you covered that surgical expense without a second thought. I’ve never forgotten that…”

“Now that’s talking like a stranger,” Jiang Hansheng said.

The hypnotist let out a hearty laugh and decided to drop it entirely. “Alright, alright, enough of that.”

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, they moved quickly to the matter at hand.

The glass was one-way. On the other side of the partition, Zhou Jin watched Jiang Hansheng in silence.

The room was very quiet. Very quiet. The pale blue lighting was kept dim, its glow spread soft and even across the space.

“Look at this pocket watch.”

He produced a brand-new pocket watch as an aid, suspending it before Jiang Hansheng’s eyes.

“Relax your body, and slowly bring your attention to bear on it. Now — your gaze has settled on it. Keep watching, keep watching…”

“A long time passes. A very long time. You’re growing tired, your eyelids growing heavier. It gradually becomes a road, and you’re walking along it, running without stopping — you’re so tired now…”

His voice was low and gentle as he spoke the induction.

Jiang Hansheng possessed a keenness of perception that surpassed most people. He proved an excellent subject, and after two rounds of induction, he slipped into a state of deep sleep.

“Now you’re back in that place. Inside a warehouse with no one else around. It should be filthy in there, with a foul smell…”

A deeply unpleasant odor.

Darkness filled Jiang Hansheng’s vision. Time and place had dissolved away, impossible to distinguish.

Scent is the most enduring of all memories. He still remembered that smell — the stench of a decaying body.

A body?

Yes. There had been someone else in the warehouse. Not someone — a body, one that had begun to putrefy quickly in the oppressive heat.

It was a young man. He had been thrown into a corner that lay out of sight, his head hanging lifelessly, a gaping hole of blood visible on his chest.

Dead for two days? Or three?

He was someone who had been in the same warehouse as Jiang Hansheng — and had been killed there.

His identity?

What identity?

Jiang Hansheng didn’t remember the man’s name, didn’t know who he was — only that he, too, had been taken captive.

In the aftermath of the “8·17” firearm robbery, the police had swiftly sealed off Haizhou City and tightened patrols at every checkpoint.

Including Qi Yan, there had been four of them in total — trapped within the cordoned area, unable to slip away in time.

Before they had seized Jiang Hansheng, they had been fleeing and hiding for half a month. Only recently had they found this abandoned warehouse as a temporary refuge.

They needed food to sustain themselves, and would typically send one person out to obtain it.

On one such occasion, while one of them was out foraging, their vehicle got a flat tire on an unpaved road.

Just as he was feeling as though there was no way forward, an off-road vehicle came driving up from a distance.

He flagged it down.

Inside were a young couple on a holiday trip. He asked, in perfectly civil tones, to borrow a spare tire.

The couple was friendly and generous — they offered it without hesitation, and even lent a hand, helping him get the tire changed.

Under ordinary circumstances, some cash would have changed hands, and both parties could have gone their separate ways without incident.

But as it happened, the man turned out to be an automobile enthusiast. He walked around the vehicle for a while, singing its praises, and then said he wanted to have a look at how spacious the trunk was.

When he opened the door, he saw the unmistakable shape of a black gun.

“They were brought back to the warehouse. You were there too — but you had been blindfolded, and everything before your eyes was pitch black.”

Jiang Hansheng’s breathing grew gradually heavier.

“So — what could you hear?”

“……”

“Whistling.”

A whistled melody drifting through the air.

Light and easy, tracing the notes of a piano piece.