Yes, it was Jiang Lian.

He sat upright behind the table, expressionless. Though his eyes were open, his pupils didn’t focus—no different from a blind man. One hand pressed down on papers scattered messily before him, while the other was raised, palm up, as if asking something from the air.

Inside and outside this room, such a major incident had occurred with tremendous commotion, yet he could still sit calmly.

Meng Qianzi walked to the table, placing both hands on its edge, looking down at him.

Jiang Lian remained seated, his hand still raised.

Meng Qianzi bent down, moving closer to examine his face. Meng Jinsong, fearing for her safety, blurted out: “Qianzi!”

Meng Qianzi raised her hand slightly, signaling him to be quiet.

At this close distance, she could smell Jiang Lian’s scent—clean, as men go. She could see the light abrasion on his eyelid, like a gua sha mark, probably from when she had forcefully pressed his head into the mud the night before. She could also see his eyeballs rapidly moving beneath his closed eyelids.

Jiang Lian spoke again, murmuring the same two words: “Red color.”

Meng Qianzi’s gaze swept across the table.

Before him was a stack of drawing paper. The top sheet was half-finished, but from her angle, she couldn’t make out what was drawn. His drawing style was strange—most artists first sketch the general outline, but his lines were all chaotic scribbles, blocks of color here and there, with no apparent method.

Besides the drawing paper, many sharpened colored pencils were scattered across the table, in various colors, rolling everywhere.

Red color…

Meng Qianzi looked at his still-raised empty hand. Could he be asking for a pencil?

She picked up the red pencil and slowly, tentatively placed it in his hand. Only then did she realize that after handling Liu Sheng’s body and grabbing Kuang Meiying, her own hands were covered in blood. Even the table where she had just pressed her hands had bloody prints.

The color stimulated her pupils to tighten and the skin on the side of her face to tremble slightly, involuntarily.

Jiang Lian gripped the pencil and, like a marionette, stiffly bent forward and began drawing on the paper again. This time, Meng Qianzi could see clearly that he was indeed coloring, as if playing with a coloring sheet only he could see. Only when all the colors were filled in would anyone know what he was drawing.

Meng Qianzi moved around the corner of the table to Jiang Lian’s side.

Meng Jinsong’s heart raced. Everything before him seemed eerie, and he didn’t know what she intended to do. Just as he was about to speak, Meng Qianzi raised her foot and violently kicked Jiang Lian, sending him crashing to the floor with his chair.

The crash was loud, causing the floorboards to shake several times. Xin Ci, who had just arrived downstairs panting, looked up in surprise to see the accumulated dust on the ceiling boards falling in the dim yellow light.

Jiang Lian lay on the ground, his body curled up and trembling, emitting groans of pain from his throat.

Meng Qianzi harshly commanded: “Wake him up.”

Xin Ci was fortunate. From the commotion coming from upstairs, he could tell someone had died. Warned by Qiu Dong to “stay to the side, don’t disturb the scene,” he climbed the stairs fearfully, covering his face with his hands to avoid seeing anything too bloody.

But he still saw blood, the feet of the person being carried out, and a rubber shoe fallen on the ground—Liu Sheng’s shoe. Before setting out, Liu Sheng had rolled up his pant legs and smeared mud on them, so Xin Ci had a vivid impression of those shoes.

He felt a chill in his heart. As a child, he had listened to old men telling horror stories on the street. One had vividly described how “when people die, their feet shrink, making their shoes too big, and the shoes fall off.” Growing up, he knew this was nonsense, but childhood memories tend to stick with you for life, never to be forgotten.

At the door of the second floor, he encountered Meng Jinsong with an extremely unpleasant expression. Xin Ci asked softly: “Where’s Qianzi?”

Meng Jinsong jerked his head toward the balcony: “Over there.”

Then he lowered his voice: “She’s angry.”

Xin Ci understood: “I’ll go.”

Meng Jinsong felt a wave of relief. When Meng Qianzi was angry, she became very dark, just like earlier, not a single harsh word, just that one kick, and he knew she must be in a frenzy. Once on the balcony, she had become eerily silent—the quieter she was, the more Meng Jinsong feared. At times like these, only Xin Ci dared approach her, proving that the “Grand Eunuch Xin” was still useful.

Between the room and the balcony, there was no door, just a blue curtain with white flowers, raised during the day and lowered at night.

Now the curtain was down, emanating the earthy smell of plant-dyed cotton.

Xin Ci lifted the curtain and entered.

Meng Qianzi sat on a worn-out long bench. Perhaps finding it stifling, she had removed her eye patch, which was now wrapped around her finger, and was expressionlessly gazing at the distant forest: the mist surged through the forest—in ancient times, this would have been considered miasma.

Xin Ci walked up to her and sighed.

Meng Qianzi uttered a few words through clenched teeth: “Fuck it all.”

Xin Ci wasn’t surprised. People always need to vent. Many crude words that mountain dwellers considered inappropriate or beneath their status, Meng Qianzi wouldn’t say in public, but would say in private. Before, she probably vented behind closed doors, but after Xin Ci came along, she got used to telling him. After all, venting requires resonance—having someone nearby listening, nodding, and responding is far better than raging alone.

This was why he, an externally hired makeup artist, could maintain a transcendent position, sometimes even on par with Meng Jinsong: he shared and channeled her darkness and secrets while maintaining her brilliant public image.

Meng Qianzi turned to look at him, speaking slowly and deliberately, yet still keeping her voice low to prevent others from hearing: “Did you see? Did you see? I’m the biggest head of the mountain dwellers, and under my nose, they killed my person, damn it…”

Her eyes were filled with fury. In a moment of vengeful impulse, she kicked the railing. These old wooden posts couldn’t withstand her kick—they broke with a crack, and several pieces flew out, rolling onto the ground in front of the building.

Liu Guanguo and Qiu Dong, who were carrying Jiang Lian and the others out, heard the noise but didn’t understand what was happening. They looked toward the balcony in confusion. Meng Jinsong, knowing what was going on, said: “Focus on your work, don’t mind it.”

Xin Ci wasn’t afraid of her demolishing the house, but since force acts reciprocally, he worried she might hurt her foot. He quickly went over to pull her arm: “Come, come, Qianzi, let’s calm down. First, take a deep breath, follow my rhythm…”

Meng Qianzi shook off his hand: “Get lost, don’t try that with me.”

She paced back and forth in the small balcony, frantically combing her hair with her fingers, taking deep breaths in and out. Finding the necklace around her neck bothersome, she yanked it off and threw it to the ground. Xin Ci saw the spider pendant lying with its abdomen up and eight legs in the air, finding it oddly amusing. Fulfilling his duty, he picked it up, checked for damage, and then pocketed it.

After a while, Meng Qianzi finally stopped and put on her eye patch by herself.

Xin Ci went over to help arrange her hair, braiding a section to make her look more spirited. Meng Qianzi allowed him to braid it and asked: “Was it my poor planning?”

Xin Ci pulled out a hairpin from the small divided pouch on the inside of his jacket—his coat had these pouches that held the most convenient hair ties, combs, and emergency sample makeup, all arranged in order. After all, it was his profession, deserving of reverence and professionalism. He used the hairpin to secure one side of her hair roots: “It’s not your fault. It was mainly Old Meng’s arrangement.”

Meng Qianzi said, “But I nodded in agreement.”

Xin Ci made an affirmative sound, then thought for a moment: “Maybe we underestimated the opponent and didn’t adequately assess the situation. We thought it was a small matter—who knew it would be so serious? As for Liu Sheng… Wei Biao had already come downstairs, so he could have asked Wei Biao if those two were inside. Wasn’t it agreed beforehand that everyone would go in together? His entering the building alone was quite risky. If successful, it would have been commendable courage; unsuccessful, it was reckless underestimation.”

Meng Qianzi didn’t respond, but after a while, she nodded very lightly: “What else?”

“Also… I think you shouldn’t have charged in first earlier. Although leading from the front is admirable, what if there had been danger? If you were the first to fall, the mountain dwellers would suffer a great loss. Look at chess—sacrificing a pawn to save a chariot, or a chariot to save the general—each piece has its duty, each has its place.”

Meng Qianzi sneered: “It’s not like they sacrificed you. Easy for you to talk.”

The fact that she could mock him showed that her emotions had calmed. Xin Ci was quite pleased. He helped arrange her braided hair, then stood to the side, looking at the scenery outside.

How peaceful and beautiful these small villages in the mountain hollows were! The winding mountain paths, wisps of smoke rising here and there, the dark wooden houses, and not far away, cattle walking along the ridges between fields, bells dangling from their necks, jingling. Old Ga had also returned and was bending over, picking up each wooden post that Meng Qianzi had kicked down. After all, it was his own house—he was the one who cared most about it.

After some time, Meng Jinsong’s voice came from behind the curtain: “Qianzi.”

Meng Qianzi responded and stood up.

Xin Ci didn’t follow immediately, deliberately lagging one or two seconds behind to watch Meng Qianzi lift the curtain and enter the room, to see how the light inside framed her cold, hard features.

Life is like a stage—relax during intermissions to touch up your makeup, then don your armor and return to battle.

Xin Ci held back the falling curtain and ducked in behind her. As soon as he entered the room, he shuddered with a chill.

Strange—earlier, when he came in, with that large pool of blood and a corpse lying across it, he had endured it. Now the corpse had been removed and the blood cleaned up, with only a circle of glutinous rice symbolically sprinkled where the body had lain, like white powder marking the spot. Yet he felt an irrepressible cold chill throughout his body.

Meng Jinsong was waiting by the table, with an exhausted-looking Liu Guanguo standing a bit further away. Qiu Dong wasn’t present, presumably guarding Jiang Lian and the others downstairs.

Meng Qianzi sat down at the table. Just as she was about to speak, she suddenly noticed that the stack of drawings on the table had been rearranged and seemed to have many new additions, making it quite thick. The topmost sheet now showed a more complete shape and scene.

Xin Ci exclaimed in surprise: “Isn’t this the one from last night, the kill… kill…”

He stammered, his heart pounding like a drum.

Meng Jinsong coughed lightly twice: “Jiang Lian seems to have drawn many pictures. Besides those spread on the table, several dozen more were found, which I’ve gathered here. Each drawing is marked with a date. The earliest one is from over a month ago. Checking the dates against weather records, it rained on all those nights.”

Meng Qianzi didn’t answer, just carefully examined the drawings.

To be honest, these images were both crude and detailed—crude in that the figures had no distinct features or facial expressions, detailed in that their actions and states were discernible. One could see this was a vast forest where a woman lay fallen on the ground, looking up in despair. Before her stood a rough, large man raising a big knife high, while in the distance behind him was also a scene of slaughter—people falling, pack horses startled, and people with knives holding blazing torches high.

Meng Qianzi turned to the next page, and then the next. Sure enough, the scene from last night was among them: a woman in white with her neck half cut open, desperately crawling forward, one hand raised with effort, as if trying to grasp something.

Jiang Lian had fished for mirages and drawn mirages. He was trying to find something in scenes from eighty or ninety years ago.

Meng Qianzi put down the drawings, her gaze falling elsewhere: on the table was a new white porcelain dish containing the washed small blade.

She picked up the knife to examine it closely. It was very small, about ten centimeters long, without a handle, just a section wrapped with blue cloth strips. The blade was extremely sharp, long, and slender like a willow leaf, clearly meticulously sharpened.

Meng Jinsong also looked at the knife: “This is it. One slice to the throat. I asked Old Ga—he said this small hand knife was from the house. He used it regularly and would leave it anywhere in the house.”

Meng Qianzi made a sound of acknowledgment: “What else?”

“The person was killed at the stairway entrance. A lot of blood splattered there, and there’s also a large pool at the doorway—that’s from dripping. Finally, he fell face down, probably collapsing in the doorway. We’ve checked everything else carefully—no other traces. Also…”

He lowered his voice: “We’ve searched everywhere. Our item wasn’t found.”

The golden bell wasn’t found, and now they had lost Liu Sheng too. If this were a business deal, it would be like losing every last penny.