"What was it?"
"It looked like a five-pointed star," said Du Yu, frowning. "Jeez, who could be that bored?"
"A five-pointed star?" Fang Mu looked down either end of the corridor. None of the other doors had anything written on them.
"You haven't erased it yet?" asked Liu Jianjun, sticking his head out of the doorway opposite.
"Almost." Du Yu redoubled his efforts, and at last the marks disappeared.
"Man, that was some freaky stuff," said Liu Jianjun, grimacing. "Sort of like Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves."
Fang Mu laughed. "In that case I'll go draw a five-pointed star on every door in the corridor!"
In the middle of that night, Fang Mu suddenly awoke.
Something was rustling in the dorm room. He forced his eyes open and scanned the small area by the light of the moon.
His breath caught in his throat.
Someone was standing in front of his closed door.
Fang Mu wanted to reach under his pillow and grab the knife, but his body felt frozen and he couldn't move an inch. He wanted to open his mouth and yell for Du Yu to wake up, but the words seemed trapped inside his throat and he couldn't make a sound.
Cold sweat dripped down his forehead. He stared at the intruder, struggling with all his strength to react.
The person stood with his back to Fang Mu, seemingly unaware that he was awake. He was drawing something on the inside of the door.
Flames burst from its surface following the movements of his hand.
No.
Fang Mu felt himself begin to shake. A scorched odor filled his nostrils.
A five-pointed star burned on the door.
The intruder slowly turned. In the light of the flames, Fang Mu could see Wu Han's ruined face.
No…!
Suddenly a blinding white light shined in Fang Mu's eyes. Du Yu's voice sounded in his ears: "Fang Mu, Fang Mu. Are you okay?"
Fang Mu opened his eyes. He could vaguely see Du Yu standing over him, a worried look on his face.
"What happened? Did you have another nightmare?"
Fang Mu struggled to sit up. He pushed Du Yu away from him and looked at the door.
Besides their class schedules, it was bare.
He had been dreaming.
Drained, Fang Mu lay back on the bed. The sheet beneath him was damp with perspiration. He reached down and felt it. Cold sweat soaked the bed.
"You okay?" Du Yu asked, handing Fang Mu a towel.
"Thanks," said Fang Mu. "I'm fine. You should get back to sleep." He took the towel and wiped his face and neck.
Du Yu pulled the cord on the lamp and the room returned to quiet darkness.
But Fang Mu couldn't sleep.
It was obvious that this nightmare was completely different than the one he was used to.
A five-pointed star? What did it mean?
The five-pointed star was one of the earliest symbols of nature worship in the world. It was also one of the purest, most perfect geometric shapes. At first it represented the female sex; later it became a mark of paganism, and more recently it indicated warfare.
Does this mean someone's offering me a challenge? Fang Mu thought about this and found it ridiculous. Don't worry about it, he told himself. Didn't you just promise yourself that you'd be an ordinary person?
After that Fang Mu slept very deeply. If Du Yu hadn't woken him up for breakfast, he might have slept all day.
The two roommates walked leisurely to the dining hall, chatting all the while. Frequently, however, people would rush past them, and though at first Fang Mu took little notice of this, he soon realized that something was amiss. Everyone on campus seemed to be hurrying toward the same place: the track and field stadium.
"What's going on?" asked Du Yu, pulling aside a foreign language student.
"I'm not totally sure," the student said. "But I heard there's a dead body on the soccer field."
The track and field stadium was located at the northwest corner of campus. At its center was a regulation-size soccer field covered with artificial turf, a rarity at the time, surrounded by a synthetic track. When Fang Mu and Du Yu reached the stadium, over a dozen police cars were already parked outside, lights flashing. Walking inside, they saw at least a couple hundred people crowded around the northern goal. Frightened yet excited students packed the surrounding stands.
Before they had reached the front, Fang Mu spotted Liu Jianjun's tall frame squeezed into the crowd. He was up on his tiptoes and doing his best to see what was happening. Fang Mu walked over and, putting a hand on his shoulder, asked: "What's going on here?"
Liu Jianjun almost jumped with surprise. When he turned around and saw it was Fang Mu, he laughed and said, "Ah, so the master sleuth has arrived."
Ignoring him, Fang Mu stood on his tiptoes and looked toward the center of the crowd. "I heard someone died. Is that true?"
"Yeah, but I don't know who it was. There are too many people."
As those at the back jostled to see, several of the students in front of Fang Mu were almost knocked over. Turning around, they were about to complain when they saw Fang Mu. Much to his surprise, they spontaneously opened a path for him to get by, looks of awe on their faces.
Feeling a little embarrassed, Fang Mu was about to turn and leave when Du Yu and Liu Jianjun seized the opportunity and pushed him deeper into the crowd.
The scene was already sealed off with a police cordon. Compared to the crush outside, the area within the cordon looked almost empty. Lying face down beneath the goalpost was a corpse. Based on its build, it appeared to be a man. His face was pressed against the turf and couldn't be made out, but there was something extremely strange about the length of his arms extending to either side.
As several medical examiners in white lab coats bustled about the body, one carefully lifted a pale object from beside the left goalpost and examined it closely.
The surrounding students gasped in terror. It was a hand.
Several policemen who appeared to be part of the evidence unit combed the area surrounding the goal, while nearby an officer holding a notebook was interviewing a male student dressed in gym clothes. The student's face was deathly pale, as if he might faint at any time.
Not long after, the medical examiners turned the dead man onto his back, revealing his frozen face. Several of the students nearby cried out in alarm.
"Who is it?" asked Liu Jianjun, craning his neck to see. "Why does he look so familiar?"
Fang Mu also felt the dead man's clothing looked very familiar, but he couldn't remember where he'd seen him before.
"I'm going over there to take a look," said Liu Jianjun. He began squeezing his way through the pack toward the area just opposite the corpse. A few minutes later, he looked back at Fang Mu and Du Yu. His face was pale.
"It's Qu Weiqiang," he said to them. "His hands have both been cut off. It's horrible."
That day, every corner of campus was buzzing with discussion about the murder on the soccer field. Frequently people would come and ask Fang Mu for news on the case. The subtext was clear: If you don't take care of this, who will?
Fang Mu was soon fed up. After turning a contemptuous look on the nth visitor, he couldn't take it any longer and left the dorm to find somewhere to hide out.
It was already 8:30 p.m., but still the campus was busy with students hurrying to and fro. Wanting to avoid the crowds, Fang Mu made sure to stick to the darkest corners. Before long, he had inadvertently arrived at the track and field stadium.
This was normally the top spot for couples wanting to meet up after dark, but tonight it was completely empty. Everyone was scared away by that morning's tragedy. Evidently, now that this arena of romance had been transformed into a crime scene, wandering the track and whispering in a sweetheart's ear no longer seemed so pleasant.