The nurse knew I was back and gave me an injection. I said nothing, staring blankly at the bag. Earlier, I had given the keys and tape to Brother Chang, thinking he might use them when he looked for the museum's national warehouse. Now, looking at the bag, I saw condoms, Bluetooth earphones, a phone battery, two packets of instant coffee, a coin, a Swiss Army knife, and a Wenliang jade tablet left inside.
I needed to think, to have time. Seeing so much, I couldn't help but sigh, but I still had to keep looking at these things.
Just then, Yu Xiaoluo came in, her face cold. "Have you eaten?"
"No."
"I bought you steamed buns and porridge."
I ate with one hand. Yu Xiaoluo took the bag and said casually, "This imitation is so fake, twenty yuan each in Xidan. But if you meet a foreigner, you could sell it for a hundred. You treat it like a treasure."
"What did you say?"
"This is a fake bag!"
Did I know it was a fake bag? Chang Dachun had told me before that this couldn't be Lin Han's bag; Lin Han wouldn't buy such cheap stuff.
"Why would foreigners buy fake bags?"
"Are all foreigners rich? Aren't foreigners vain? Some foreigners came to Beijing specifically to buy fake Rolexes at Tianjin's fake goods market."
"Don't they sell them in foreign countries?"
"In developed countries, there are very few fakes."
I stared at the bag, lost in thought. All this time, I had thought the things in the bag were clues, guiding me to complete the scheme after my memory loss. However, this idea had a necessary condition: I had to know I would lose my memory in the future. Thus, this necessary condition became an impossible one. So, the truth was that for some reason, this bag was found, and I conveniently put the things I used into it.
This made sense.
Boss Wan~ Magnetic clasp~ Locker~ Pounds~ Peppa Pig pen~ The deceased foreign friend Jessica~ The female corpse cremated at the crematorium.
"Sister, you're a police officer, right?"
Yu Xiaoluo looked at me curiously. "You have amnesia, but you haven't gone stupid, have you? Why ask that question?"
"There must be a motive for murder, right?"
"Yes!"
"If I had 150,000, would I go and steal 5,000 pounds?"
"Unless you're an idiot."
"If I killed someone, could I send them to the crematorium?"
Yu Xiaoluo heard something and looked at me seriously. "You have a lead on the crematorium incident."
I nodded. "Someone killed a British girl for 5,000 pounds and brazenly sent her to the crematorium. A foreign friend's body was sent to the crematorium without a death certificate. This would definitely cause a public uproar."
"Exactly!"
"But it didn't cause an uproar."
"Why?"
"Someone intercepted it. This person was a know-it-all, familiar with the crematorium's operations. He bribed the pallbearers to carry the body to the furnace and burn it when no one was looking."
"The foreign friend that the Tai'an police had been looking for was killed and burned."
"Yes!"
Yu Xiaoluo understood the whole story. Her eyes widened. "Boss Wan played a trick with the cremation."
"Yes, but there are some things I need to go to the crematorium to find out."
Yu Xiaoluo's spirit lifted. "Let's go, right now."
"I'm getting an injection."
"What injection? You're not in the mood for an injection. I'll go find the nurse, and we'll go to the crematorium now."
...
Yu Xiaoluo and I arrived at the crematorium together. The woman in charge of registration looked at me several times. I understood the meaning of her gaze; she recognized me.
"Auntie, you know me?"
"Yes, aren't you Tang Nan? The one who came to claim his girlfriend's ashes."
"I cried?"
"You cried. It would have been better if you had cried. You said you were here to collect your girlfriend's ashes, registered, and let them take your photo, and you didn't object. Not only that, you didn't seem sad at all. When the staff handed you the ashes, you even stole two packets of my coffee. Can you blame me for recognizing you?"
I was stunned. "Coffee? Instant? Two packets? Are you sure?"
"I drink coffee every day to stay alert. I didn't get to drink it that day, so of course, I remember."
"Why would I steal your coffee?"
"You ask me? Who am I supposed to ask? You pervert."
Yu Xiaoluo was displeased. "Auntie, stealing coffee is just petty theft, not being a pervert."
"Who are you? Just because you say he's not a pervert, does that make him not one?"
"I'm a police officer!"
The auntie wasn't afraid of the police and shot Yu Xiaoluo a glare. "Is that little incident still going on? We just burned the wrong body, that's all. I don't know, I know nothing."
"Are you concealing something?"
"What am I concealing? I didn't kill anyone or set any fires. Don't talk to me about it, young policewoman. Even if the director of the Public Security Bureau came, if I don't know, I don't know."
Yu Xiaoluo was furious, feeling like she had found nothing. She thought, no wonder Captain Luo hadn't found anything. With this kind of unyielding attitude, who could investigate anything? I, however, was an unexpected surprise. The two packets of coffee in my bag were stolen, and from the auntie's few words, I inferred that I wasn't particularly concerned about the ashes at the time. Given my attitude then, those ashes should not have been Lin Han's.
Furthermore, when I came to collect the ashes, it should have been about a month after Lin Han's disappearance. We had stayed here for a total of three months. For the first two months, I lived in a hotel, mainly having Lin Han help me buy imitation Wenliang jade tablets. This was Lin Han's job. What was mine? Looking for Old Ghost, then Lin Han was captured, and I probed the waters to rescue Old Ghost. Why did it take me a month, and during this month, I didn't stay in a hotel? Where did I go?
What I could think of now was that during this month, I completed something. It should have been a scheme to deal with the person who captured Old Ghost. Why would I steal two packets of instant coffee to deal with this person? I wasn't the kind of person who would steal someone's coffee just because I was tired. Therefore, I must have used the coffee to deal with someone else.
I can't figure it out, I can't figure it out!
We returned to the hospital, and I continued my IV drip. It was almost dinnertime when Luo Bo arrived. He looked tired. I asked him, "Brother Luo, why are you so tired?"
"Sigh, how to put it? I'm anxious watching them solve the case, and their direction is wrong, yet they're still thinking about closing it."
"Why don't you guide them then?"
"Guide them with what? This isn't a case for our task force, so it's not our place to comment. Their first impression is that Boss Wan committed murder, and they won't change it. They interrogated him for over 40 hours, and strangely, Boss Wan confessed to the murder. He said he saw the foreign girl Jessica was beautiful and lusted after her. He initially intended to assault her but accidentally killed Jessica during the struggle. For insurance, he bribed the outsourced manager of the crematorium, and with the manager's complicity, the pallbearers operated in violation of procedures and burned the body. Tai'an was happy that both major cases were solved: one case of burning the wrong body and the case of the foreign friend's murder."
Yu Xiaoluo looked at Luo Bo curiously. "Captain Luo, you don't believe their investigation?"
"If he committed murder, why send the body to the crematorium? Tai Mountain is so big, why not throw it into a ravine? It doesn't make sense. Besides, we still don't know whose hair is on the folder."
I had a general understanding of Boss Wan's thoughts. He was taking the blame for someone else. And the person taking the blame was a madman, a lustful madman who assaulted and then killed the foreign girl Jessica, and sent the body to the crematorium. Boss Wan intercepted him, and through his connections, handled the body. In a short period, Tai'an had two cases solved. As I was contemplating the sequence of events, Yu Xiaoluo spoke, "Perhaps this Boss Wan has mental health issues. Teacher Wang Ren is also here, why don't we consult her?"
"We haven't seen Teacher Wang Ren for two days."
"She should be at Zhang Si's Lu Cai Restaurant. Teacher Wang Ren and Zhang Si of the Lu Cai Restaurant learned their skills together under Teacher Wende, and they have deep affection for each other, meeting once a year."
"I'll go right away!"
...
After Luo Bo left, I probably used too much brainpower and started to have a headache. The pain grew worse. The doctor gave me painkillers and sedatives, and I slowly fell asleep. In my dream, I always felt something spinning before my eyes, indistinct. I tried hard to see it. It was the coin.
A gloomy cave, with faint candlelight. Against the backdrop of faded talismans in the cave, I tossed a coin high into the air. The coin slid past my eyes, and I saw the other person's face.
It was Zhang Si. Yes, it was Zhang Si.
The coin landed, falling vertically. At that moment, all my confidence seemed to be destroyed. I almost fled, leaving the cave. I descended the mountain from the back, but Zhang Si quickly caught up. He was panting.
"Tang Nan, don't run, I have something to tell you."
"What else is there to say? Haven't you already said everything you wanted to say?"
"That wasn't me!"
Zhang Si said this, raising the imitation Wenliang jade tablet he was holding. I looked at him in surprise. "What trick are you playing now?"
"The jade is not what you think it is. It's immeasurable and mysterious."
After hearing Zhang Si's words, I gave a bitter smile. "It's your mystical theories again."
"What is heard and seen is not what everyone reads. What is passed down by word of mouth and taught by heart is not what everyone can learn. I am a violent person, but my master was able to subtly guide me onto the right path. This is the power of metaphysics."
"I don't understand."
"We have three personalities, each with different abilities, but our hearts are connected. Back then, Teacher Wende, with his unfathomable skills, put my most violent personality to sleep. Then, he taught me and the Cook. I was naturally irritable and impulsive. My master told me to practice calligraphy and cultivate my mind, taking metaphysics as the foundation to transform my impulsiveness into peace. The Cook was inherently lazy, never learning or asking. My master didn't understand, but the main personality that had fallen asleep actually used the Cook to awaken, set a trap, killed Zhu Guang, and led Li Jiu to become demonic. He devoured Zhu Guang's personality, intending to awaken with that personality, but accidentally lost to Cao Shi, whom neither of us had high hopes for. The main personality fell asleep again. The Cook, who usually controlled the body, and I, along with our new personality, the lecherous old man, arrived at the foot of Mount Tai."
"Your personalities are really chaotic."
"Originally, the Cook and I had been suppressing the lecherous old man, basically not letting him come out. However, things didn't go as I imagined. We couldn't suppress a thinking personality for a long time. The main personality took advantage of the weakness, attempting to devour us and regain control of the body. The Cook was bewitched by the main personality, and the scales began to tip towards the main personality. I knew that if this continued, eventually, we would all be devoured. So, I joined forces with the lecherous old man personality, who had been suppressing me all along, and temporarily suppressed the other personalities using the Wenliang jade tablet, the foremost sacrificial item of the Dai Temple, to create a brief window for planning."
Upon hearing this, I scoffed. "I don't even know what you're talking about."
"Tang Nan, you have to believe me. If I hadn't had a sudden idea, Cao Shi would have starved to death long ago."
Then, Old Ghost appeared in my eyes, just as he looked in the photo. I woke up abruptly.