Chapter 3

My heart almost stopped.

8

For the second time, someone was in my room.

This time, a man.

I struck instinctively. My punch missed. I rolled off the bed, retreated quickly to the door, and switched on the light.

In the sudden glare, I saw him.

Xia Cheng.

It was terrifying. Truly terrifying. My heart raced so hard I could barely calm myself. I was a trained police student, reasonably steady under pressure. Another girl might have been frightened out of her senses.

He stood beneath the white bulb. The cold light cast deep shadows over his face. In the few days since I had seen him, he seemed to have become someone else entirely.

Thinner, his face gloomy, his eyes bloodshot, he stared at me without blinking. It made my skin crawl.

I could not connect this man with the boyfriend in my memory.

“What are you doing here?” I turned my face aside, my voice stiff.

“It's Qixi today.”

“Haven't we broken up?”

He was silent, looking confused. After a while, he seemed to remember.

Only then did I realize his mind was still not right.

His expression, his voice, his eyes—everything was wrong.

Now I was truly afraid.

I loved the man before me, and I feared him. How could human feelings be so complicated?

I had come to Yanyun because of him. Yet now I wanted nothing less than to see him. I could no longer remain calmly in the same room.

Perhaps all I wanted now was the truth.

With my back to the door, I reached behind me and gripped the handle.

I wanted to open it and run. But where?

This room was my only refuge.

“…Xia Cheng, could you go outside?”

I tried to reason with him carefully. My voice shook.

He looked at me without speaking.

Another silent standoff. Seconds passed. My legs weakened until I almost sank to my knees.

He nodded.

I turned the handle and opened the door. He stepped out.

I immediately shut and locked it.

The window would not lock. I wedged a long ruler into its frame and drew the curtains.

By the time I finished, I was drenched in cold sweat.

I had never imagined we would come to this.

I remembered Wu Hui's message two days earlier: Break up with him. Stop investigating.

I had refused to listen then. Now I suddenly wondered why Wu Hui had urged me to break up too.

I took out my phone and replied.

“Why?”

His answer was brief as ever.

“There's something wrong with Xia Cheng.”

Yes. I felt it too.

It was not merely that something had shaken him. There seemed to be something else.

I called Wu Hui and demanded to know what had happened.

He hesitated for a long time. Finally, he told me. He still said nothing about the Yanyun case itself, but revealed another side Xia Cheng had concealed.

On his previous visit, Wu Hui said, Xia Cheng had behaved inappropriately toward two girls at Yanyun Primary School: Zhao Yu and Zhou Xi. Liu Qi had reported it after he left.

The unit took it seriously and immediately questioned him. He had tacitly admitted it.

Fortunately, the harassment had been relatively minor. The innocent mountain children did not understand, and there had been no serious consequences or lasting psychological harm.

Even so, it affected his future. He had appeared on television, received commendations, and become locally known. The matter could not conveniently be made public. The unit held several private conversations, hoping he would return to the right path.

Instead, once exposed, he gave up, resigned, and sank into self-neglect.

My mind went blank. I did not know when I ended the call.

Once a story takes shape, old details acquire new explanations.

Xia Cheng had taught in remote schools and volunteered at an orphanage. I had always thought him compassionate.

Had those good deeds merely served his darker appetites? Were poor children starved of affection easier to control?

Perhaps the brighter and more positive someone appeared, the darker and filthier their heart.

In two years together, I had never imagined this sickness in him.

And just now, he had been in my room.

I shuddered, checked the doors and windows again, and dared not turn out the light.

Tomorrow, I would find Little Yu and Zhou Xi and ask discreetly.

But another thought struck me. I had told no one I was coming to teach in Yanyun.

How had Xia Cheng found me?

Cold sweat broke over me.

9

The night was long. Heavy rain fell.

Outside, many people moved about, their voices rising and falling, near and far, like sounds in a dream.

By the morning of August 8, the rain had stopped.

I asked and learned they had been looking for Little Yu.

I had visited her only yesterday. By night, she was missing.

Why? Had she slipped out again?

Liu Qi's words returned: A child this young, running about every night—what if something happens?

Now it had.

Someone said the last time they saw her, she was with a young man. They described his build.

A figure immediately appeared in my mind.

Little Yu vanished last night. Last night, Xia Cheng appeared.

I dared not think further. I only wanted to find her.

The search had continued for hours, then stopped because of the darkness and rain. Today, it resumed.

I climbed the nearby mountains with them, searched every corner of town, and called her name.

Only the valley's echoes answered.

Evening came. Still nothing.

Exhausted, I walked through town and saw a restaurant television tuned to the national broadcaster.

On the evening of August 8, 2008, the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony began.

From the aerial camera, fireworks soared and burst across the night sky. Enormous footprints of fire advanced along Beijing's central axis, magnificent and overwhelming.

The sight moved me deeply. Yet every step seemed to stamp on my heart. I could scarcely breathe beneath the weight, but could not look away.

The final footprint faded. The road seemed to have reached its end.

Just then—

“Found her! We've found her!”

Someone was shouting.

…

After a day and a night, they had finally found her.

More precisely, half of her.

Little Yu lay in a deep hollow beneath a well-hidden cliff, her eyes wide, her clothes disordered, her body covered in injuries. She had been dead for some time.

Only her upper body was there. The lower half was missing. The cut at her waist was clean. No wild animal had done that.

Agony seized my heart. Almost as soon as I saw her, I understood what she had suffered before death.

Beaten, abused, brutally murdered, and cut in two. What monster could do such things to a child of seven or eight?

Again, I remembered: Little Yu disappeared last night. Xia Cheng appeared last night.

Someone asked her father whether he would call the police. Looking at the many injuries on his daughter, he hesitated.

At last, her mother put down the baby boy and rushed forward, wailing.

“She's our own daughter!”

In the end, they decided not to call.

Since Little Yu often hid at school at night, the school would bear responsibility and pay compensation.

Only then did I grasp that I could not apply ordinary shared values to this small town. In the isolated mountains, so many crimes were simply buried.

The child under the tree. Little Yu.

They did not care who was truly responsible.

I stepped aside and happened to look up.

By a tree in the distance stood that familiar, unfamiliar figure.

Seeing me notice him, Xia Cheng withdrew into the darkness.

The residents agreed not to call the police.

I called.

That meant I could no longer stay here long.

10

Little Yu's lower body was still missing. Before the police could reach the mountains, a second girl vanished.

Zhou Xi, the girl with an intellectual disability who drew so well.

Both girls had been abused by Xia Cheng. The connection filled me with despair. Was he destroying evidence?

Even if that was his aim, why such cruelty?

He was no longer the good, upright policeman I remembered. Calling him a devil would hardly be unfair.

With Little Yu's fate before them, Zhou Xi's parents nearly lost their minds. They went everywhere, weeping and begging for help.

No one dared rest. Everyone threw themselves into the next search.

On the morning of August 9, police reached the mountains and quickly examined Little Yu's crime scene. But the previous night's rain had been so heavy there was little hope of finding traces.