DNSTU 7. The Sketch

A single sketchbook stirred up a new wave of questions.

Xiang Ye decided to open every box in the storage room and examine each item one by one, leaving nothing unchecked. But his attention remained focused on the sketchbook.

“Old Xiang made his living selling calligraphy and paintings. He had several sketchbooks like this one. I always thought it was strange. What he sold publicly was much worse than what he drew in private. He could clearly paint so much better, yet he chose to accept just a few hundred yuan per piece rather than improve the quality.”

At first, Xiang Ye assumed it was just some eccentric artist’s stubbornness, like Old Xiang’s usual odd behavior. But now that he thought about it, perhaps it had been deliberate. Perhaps Old Xiang simply did not want to reveal his true skill.

“Are you sure the scene in that drawing is Lu Ye?” he asked again.

“The Enforcement has caught quite a few people from Lu Ye. That painting matches what they described,” Xing Zhou replied.

“You really never tried to see it for yourself?”

“That path has no return.”

No return?

Xing Zhou continued. It was not a road to the underworld, but one that could never be retraced. Not only could outsiders never find their way into Lu Ye, but those who left it could never go back the same way. Once gone, they were cut off from everything behind them, never to return.

“Then how do the keys get sent back?” Xiang Ye asked.

“Through a ritual. They have a specific ceremony for it, like offering incense to the dead. If the ritual succeeds, the key returns to Lu Ye.”

It sounded a lot like ghosts. The dead became spirits. The living burned paper offerings, and the ghosts received them.

Was the child whose bone had been taken still alive?

Xiang Ye wanted to ask, but the words caught in his throat. Instead, he asked, “Where did the first key come from? You said that if someone from Lu Ye has a child with someone outside, that child will possess the traits of both worlds and become a key. But if they give birth after body possession, wouldn’t that break the rules?”

If someone’s body had been taken over, if their body was not their own and only their soul remained, then the child they produced would probably carry no traits of Lu Ye at all.

But if leaving Lu Ye required destroying the body, then how did anyone ever bear a child outside? That was a contradiction.

Xing Zhou said, “Back when Chu Lian was still with the Enforcement, he once mentioned a story passed down in Lu Ye. No one knows how long ago it happened. At that time, Lu Ye was completely sealed off, and no one inside even thought about the outside world. They had no idea what was beyond and no desire to leave. Because exiting meant your body would be burned to ash. No one was willing to endure such pain for the sake of a vague, uncertain hope. But one day, a woman accidentally wandered into Lu Ye. She brought news of the outside, painting a picture of an entirely different world. From that point on—”

“Pandora’s box was opened,” Xiang Ye said quietly.

The fake Song Ling had once described Lu Ye as a hellish place. Xiang Ye now suspected that part was true. In that kind of envirypened next. The woman had a child with someone from Lu Ye.

That child became the first key.

Once there was a key, someone could leave Lu Ye with their body intact. He or she could then bear more children with outsiders. The key gave rise to new keys. Sin upon sin, a cycle without end.

Xing Zhou continued, “To this day, we haven’t found a path into Lu Ye. We’ve interrogated many people, but none of them could give us an answer. If the story is true, that woman was the only exception.”

Xiang Ye frowned in thought. After hearing Xing Zhou’s story and then looking back at Old Xiang’s sketch, he still felt something was off. The drawing looked fantastical, like a product of imagination, yet he couldn’t shake the sense that it was real.

Seeing his expression, Xing Zhou added, “Most of the people you saw last night were just ordinary folks, unrelated to Lu Ye.”

Xiang Ye was surprised. He had assumed they were all on the same side, that they must have shared some common background.

“I told you before, the cost of passing through the gate is severe. So most people who leave Lu Ye are key holders. But keys are not easily obtained. They can only be formed by giving birth and then extracting the bone. According to the Enforcement’s estimates, fewer than a hundred people have left Lu Ye and are active in the outside world,” Xing Zhou said.

Following this line of thought, Xiang Ye could more or less understand.

It took ten months to bear a child, and with everything before and after, at least a year in total. Not everyone in Lu Ye could be ruthless. Some would hesitate to extract the bone, or simply refuse to do harm at all. So the number of keys could never be large.

The presence of the Enforcement also helped limit such actions.

And thinking about it that way, the key holders themselves were not the most terrifying. The ones who could endure the agony of burning to escape Lu Ye were the truly fearsome ones.

“What about Pei Ge?” Xiang Ye asked.

“A hired hand,” Xing Zhou replied.

So that was it.

Xiang Ye looked back down at the sketchbook. Besides the image of Lu Ye, there were other drawings that leaned toward abstraction. It was hard to make out what they were meant to depict.

He then asked Xing Zhou for a photo of Chu Lian. The more he looked, the more familiar it felt.

It was a refined, pale-skinned young man in his twenties, hair neither long nor short, scholarly in appearance, with a gentle smile on his lips. Nothing about him revealed his true identity.

The more Xiang Ye stared at the photo, the more convinced he was that he had seen this man before. But how could he possibly know Chu Lian? And clearly this photo had been taken years ago, back when Chu Lian was still young…

Wait, that was a young Chu Lian!

Xiang Ye immediately pictured what he might look like ten or twenty years later, with a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. Wouldn’t that be…

“I’ve seen him!” Xiang Ye remembered now. On the day he brought Old Xiang to be cremated, that man had been standing in the corridor of the funeral home, holding an umbrella.

“You’re sure?” Xing Zhou’s face grew serious.

“I couldn’t possibly be mistaken. That day the funeral home was nearly empty. All morning, only Old Xiang was scheduled for cremation. That man stood there for a long time with his umbrella. That’s why I noticed him.”

It was April 19th, the day of Grain Rain.

At ten in the morning, the sky had obligingly started to drizzle. Old Xiang had no other family, just Xiang Ye. He was what the fake parents had called an ungrateful stray, not someone who would cry over a funeral.

Xiang Ye had felt stifled and stepped outside for some air. As he turned, he caught sight of a pair of eyes behind glasses, visible through the glass wall.

They were long, upturned phoenix eyes, smiling even before he spoke. The man was polished and courteous, dressed in a suit and holding an umbrella under the eaves. It struck Xiang Ye as strange.

But now he understood. Dressed in black, with a black umbrella, the man had come to see Old Xiang off.

Just then, Xing Zhou received a call. The new window had arrived. He went out to receive it, leaving Xiang Ye alone in the storage room to keep searching for clues.

This storage room had originally been Old Xiang’s bedroom. After his death, Xiang Ye converted it. There hadn’t been many belongings left behind. Old Xiang spent his days painting and smoking, a man with no real desires.

Was there something he had missed?

Was there a detail he had overlooked, something important hiding in plain sight?

Xiang Ye racked his brain. At the time of Old Xiang’s death, he had been preparing for the college entrance exams. The school had mandatory evening study sessions, so he was out early and back late. It was easy to overlook things.

If he had to point to something unusual during that time…

Old Xiang’s health had declined. But his health had never been good, and it hadn’t suddenly worsened all at once. When Xiang Ye was too busy, Aunt Qian sometimes brought over meals. But she had never mentioned anything out of the ordinary.

The more he thought about it, the more lost in thought he became. He accidentally inhaled some dust, choked, and began to cough violently.

Xing Zhou heard the fit of coughing from the hallway. He rushed in and steadied him with a few quick strides.

The sketchbook in Xiang Ye’s hands fell to the floor, landing open on a page with a landscape. His eyes locked on the flowers in the picture. A spark of realization struck him. He clutched Xing Zhou’s arm.

“The flowers—those flowers!”

In the days before Old Xiang’s death, Xiang Ye had seen a glass vase on the windowsill of this room, the very one they stood in now, and inside it were fresh flowers.

Old Xiang had been bedridden. There was no way he could have gone downstairs to pick flowers. Aunt Qian certainly didn’t have the time or interest for that kind of thing.

So the flowers had to be from a guest.

But who had come to visit?

Who had brought them?

The workers carrying the new window stood awkwardly at the door. They didn’t dare move, and they didn’t dare ask questions. It was their first time installing windows in such an eerie place, and it was already late at night. If the buyer hadn’t paid double, they would never have come.

Finally, the tall man from earlier returned and gave them instructions. Once the window was installed, the workers left in a hurry, afraid of running into ghosts.

Xiang Ye had recovered from the coughing, but the coldness in his eyes had returned.

If he remembered correctly, then Chu Lian had been here all along. He had walked freely in and out under Xiang Ye’s nose. He even had the leisure to arrange flowers, while Xiang Ye had been the only one kept completely in the dark.

“Look at this.” Xing Zhou handed over his phone, showing him Xiang Qi’s profile.

Xiang Ye only needed a glance before his breath nearly stopped. The birthdate listed on the screen seemed to mock him outright. The past eighteen years of his life had been a lie from beginning to end. Nothing had been real.

“Xiang Qi and Chu Lian were likely acquainted,” Xing Zhou said, “but the exact circumstances still need to be investigated.”

Xiang Ye clenched his fists, but a smile tugged at his lips. “Then investigate. Why wouldn’t we? Dig it all up and show me exactly what else they’ve been hiding.”

He stepped past Xing Zhou and strode into the living room. Earlier, he had been too stunned to remember that when he left in a hurry with the fake parents yesterday, he had forgotten to dismantle the bug planted in the room.

The device was secondhand, but it still had recording capabilities. Xiang Ye exported the audio and hit play. Static crackled through the speakers again.

But all he could hear was the current. After a while, the faint sound of wind striking a window crept in, barely audible.

Xiang Ye set it to maximum playback speed and let it run. Then he asked Xing Zhou about Chu Lian’s disappearance, but at the time, Xing Zhou had not yet joined the Enforcement. The only information he had came from the official case files.

“There was a major operation. The Enforcement had tracked down the whereabouts of several keys and launched an investigation. Chu Lian participated in that mission, but not a single person came back alive. Both the Enforcement and the Lu Ye forces were nearly wiped out. When the others realized something was wrong and went to check, all they found was a short video recorded on a phone.”

The footage showed a horrific scene filled with the dead and dying. Chu Lian was the only one left standing. In the video, he pulled a knife from the chest of another Enforcement member, picked up a string of bone keys laid out like a necklace, and walked away.

Xing Zhou, as part of the new generation within the Enforcement, had naturally seen that top-secret video. He still remembered the expression on Chu Lian’s face. It was bleak and chilling, stained with blood, and yet he had worn a faint smile.

He had looked like a lotus blooming in hellfire.

“Hello there.”

The sudden voice came through the speakers and landed directly in their ears, perfectly timed with Xing Zhou’s memory. It was as if the Chu Lian in the video had turned to greet them.

Even more disturbing, it was unmistakably Chu Lian’s voice.

It was coming from the bug.

The static continued, but Chu Lian’s voice grew clearer. It was as if he had stepped right up to the device, smiling as he greeted them.

“I’m Chu Lian.”

“You should know my name.”

“I’ve returned.”

“I’m sorry for disappearing for so long. I’m sure you have a lot of questions, don’t you, little Xiang Ye? Ah Qi said you live up to your name, wild and hard to tame. I imagine you’ve caused quite a stir. I look forward to watching over you.”

“I saw you at the funeral home that day. I regret not being able to speak with you. Maybe you’d be interested in hearing about the Lu Ye plains. Though the scenery there is as dull as ever.”

“I look forward to our next meeting.”

“Oh, and if you’re really so eager to find out the truth, you might want to check Shen Yanzhi’s bank accounts. You could find something unexpected. And a little advice, practice your running. It may help you stay alive.”

Immediately following that was the sound of violent wind and rain, like a window being blown open. The lamp and stove clattered to the floor one after the other. After the chaos passed, silence returned. No other sounds followed for a long time.

Xiang Ye fast-forwarded and replayed the audio repeatedly. Once he confirmed that Chu Lian’s voice did not appear again, he finally stopped.

Chu Lian’s return was clearly a declaration. No one knew where he was, yet he seemed to be everywhere. Even Xing Zhou hadn’t expected that, while he was busy protecting Xiang Ye and assuming Chu Lian’s name had been used as bait, Chu Lian had actually come to the unfinished building and left that message behind.

So where was he now? Was he still in Jiangzhou?

“Jueming.” Xing Zhou put his earpiece back in and issued the command. “Full investigation.”

That night, neither Xing Zhou nor Xiang Ye could sleep.

Xiang Ye once again felt that sense of being watched, not in the literal sense of someone hiding in the shadows, but a pressure rooted deep in the mind. He had dozed off at some point, but when he saw the sunlight the next day, it somehow felt worse than if he had not slept at all.

The scent of breakfast helped ease his frayed nerves. When he walked into the living room, he saw Xing Zhou frying eggs on the stove with a flat-bottomed pan.

After last night’s Tianluo Girl incident, Xiang Ye took the scene in stride. Even if Xing Zhou were to suddenly pull out a gun and get into a shootout, he felt he could remain perfectly calm.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“Two days before the incident with your parents, someone transferred five hundred thousand yuan to your father’s account. But no one has touched the money since,” Xing Zhou replied, placing the fried egg into a bowl and handing it to him.

The little sprite was still chirping in Xing Zhou’s earpiece. “He can’t just eat a fried egg for breakfast. Xiang Ye is still growing! He needs milk. Got that? Milk. Gulp gulp gulp, drink your milk—”

Xiang Ye couldn’t hear any of it. He held the bowl, thinking quietly.

His father had only been an ordinary office worker. Who would transfer half a million to him? And at such a critical moment, no less. Typically, a sudden influx of money meant a deal had taken place.

“Who sent the money?” Xiang Ye asked.

Xing Zhou glanced at him and paused for a couple seconds before answering.

“Someone from Lu Ye. He later died during the Chu Lian incident.”

It was difficult not to suspect something sinister behind a payment from someone connected to Lu Ye.

But Xiang Ye no longer flinched at that kind of news. When the debts piled up, one more didn’t matter. He was not the same person he had been yesterday. He polished off the egg in two or three bites, set down the bowl and chopsticks, and said, “I want to go to the funeral home.”

Chu Lian had once appeared there. Whether or not anything remained, Xiang Ye had to check it himself.

---

8:00 a.m., Municipal Funeral Home.

Xiang Ye asked the staff about the events of April 19. Though two months had passed, they still remembered him. For one thing, he had a striking appearance. For another, it was rare for a child to come alone to cremate an elder.

“Now that you mention it,” one of them said, “I do recall a man standing in the corridor for a while. Looked like a refined guy, wore glasses. Sort of had the air of a university professor. But I don’t remember when he left.”

He had not learned much, so he walked over to the spot where Chu Lian had once stood. From there, he could see the courtyard and the large tree. Beyond that was a small convenience stall, and standing in front of it was Xing Zhou.

Xing Zhou returned with a bottle of milk and handed it to him.

Xiang Ye had no idea what the fuck was going on.

“What you see isn’t always the truth. Getting five hundred thousand doesn’t prove anything. The money is still sitting there, untouched. And even if Chu Lian killed members of the Enforcement, that doesn’t automatically make him a traitor. What if the people he killed were the real traitors?” Xiang Ye said.

“But he fled,” Xing Zhou replied.

“That’s why we have to find him and confront him face to face.” Xiang Ye gripped the bottle tightly. Based on what they had heard last night, Chu Lian would definitely show up again. But until then, the best strategy was to find him first.

The problem was, in a city full of people, where was he supposed to start looking?