Seeming very pleased with his students' behavior, Sun Pu walked slowly between the rows. "You must consider this problem very carefully," he said loudly, "the answer will probably exceed anything you've imagined."
Fang Mu already knew the answer, and he couldn't help but feel that Sun Pu's deliberately mystifying style was a little excessive. Organizing his belongings, he prepared to leave when the bell rang.
Suddenly, he felt a hand on his shoulder. When he looked up, his eyes met Sun Pu's.
Although the man was still smiling, his eyes, hidden behind his glasses, suddenly shot forth a look of immense coldness. It was fierce look, like something from hell, and even the sight of his faint smile was enough to make Fang Mu tremble with fear.
Suddenly Sun Pu's grip on Fang Mu's shoulder tightened. Still smiling, he bent over slightly and whispered in his ear: "This is number seven, the final question. Can you answer it?"
It was as if a clap of thunder had exploded overhead. In an instant, everyone around them seemed to disappear without a trace. In the whole world, all that was left was Fang Mu and the person standing in front of him.
Six questions, nine dead, and a friend who would never be right in the head again.
Bloody memories flashed through Fang Mu's mind at lightning speed. He felt all the blood suddenly rush to his head. He leapt to his feet.
All the students around him were startled and they shot him looks of surprise.
Sun Pu didn't move a muscle, just continued to look into Fang Mu's eyes, the same faint smile on his lips. "Well, are you able to tell me the answer?"
Clenching his teeth, Fang Mu held on tightly to the edge of his desk.
Sun Pu's gaze dropped to his watch. "All right, class is about to end. Now I'll tell you the answer."
The students' attention shifted from Fang Mu's strange behavior back to Sun Pu.
"The answer is: the dead man had climbed up to see the man in the cabin — remember, he lived on top of a mountain — and after he knocked on the door, the man who lived there opened it and accidentally pushed his poor visitor down the mountain."
Several students began to laugh.
"But the unlucky guy wouldn't give up," Sun Pu said, "so again he climbed up to the cabin, and again he was pushed back down."
The laughter grew louder.
"This happened over and over again, until finally the visitor could take no more, and perished."
The whole class erupted with laughter as all the students began to clap.
Amid this noise the bell rang, and Sun Pu waved his hand. "Class dismissed."
The students all quickly rushed out of the classroom. When Fang Mu finally came back to reality, he found himself standing there alone.
The dais was empty. Sun Pu must have already left.
Still, Fang Mu stared hard at the place where he had once stood.
No matter what, I will find the answer to the seventh question!
When he emerged from the EducationBuilding, the sky had already grown dark. Looking up, he watched as a big black cloud swallowed the last bit of blue sky. Although it was still afternoon, the hour already felt late.
It looked like another blizzard was coming.
His mind in turmoil, Fang Mu took a few deep breaths of the dry, cold air. Gradually he began to feel a little better. Realizing that he should probably give Tai Wei a call, he dialed him several times on his cell phone, but the cop never answered. After hesitating for a moment, Fang Mu decided to head back to his dorm.
Sitting on Fang Mu's desk were all the materials relating to the Zhang Yao murder. At the top of the stack was a photocopy of the passage that had been found on her body and underneath it was the book it was from, Legends of the Hulan River.
He picked up the photocopy. By now he was as familiar as could be with the passage, even down to memorizing the locations of all the punctuation marks. But no matter how he approached it, he was unable to locate a single clue to the killer's next crime. He had tried combining the seventh word of every sentence, even the seventh of every paragraph, but the result was a bunch of nonsense, containing not even the most obscure hint of meaning.
It seemed that the clue wasn't going to be found in the passage itself, but rather in its source.
The direct source of the passage was the sixth edition summer reading textbook for fourth-graders published by the People's Education Press. It also rested levelly on the desk, looking completely innocent. Fang Mu had read every passage inside, completed every exercise, and still he hadn't found a single clue.
The indirect source was Legends of the Hulan River itself. Resplendent Sunset came from the first chapter. Legends of the Hulan River was far from a long book, but finding a single clue hidden inside would be more troublesome than any of the other possibilities, so Fang Mu had left it until the end. Now it seemed this was his only hope.
Legends of the Hulan River was written by Xiao Hong, a modern Chinese author. She had been born into a landholding family on June 2, 1911, in Hulan County, Heilongjiang, and died of an illness on January 22, 1942, in Hong Kong. Legends of the Hulan River was less a novel than a long prose collection of Hong Xian's cherished childhood memories.
Twirling his fountain pen — a gift from Professor Qiao — Fang Mu patiently read through, page after page.
As he searched for clues, he discovered that the word troublesome didn't even begin to describe the difficulty of the task before him.
Based on the previous crimes, the killer should once more be copying the methods of a famous serial killer from history.
But searching through this book — about the lives and customs of people in a small town in northeastern China — for clues to a serial killer's murders was like trying to find secret kung fu techniques in a cookbook. As Fang Mu flipped through the pages, he paid special attention to words like "kill," "hit", and "death", hoping to find some trace of the killer's intentions.
"Another horse drowned in the small lake." He felt this one was unrelated; after all, it was just a horse.
"Horribly embarrassed, the mother grabbed the fire poker from beside the door and struck the child on the shoulder. The child immediately began to cry and ran back into the house." Fire poker? thought Fang Mu. Had something like that ever been used as a murder weapon?
"She stood inside of an enormous vat, screaming and trying to jump out, as if her life were in danger. Three or four people stood around her, scooping hot water from the vat and dumping it on her head. Before long, her face was red from the water; she couldn't struggle anymore and just stood calmly in the vat. She didn't try to jump out again, as if she no longer thought it possible. The vat itself was huge, so that when she stood up only her head poked out." Was the next murder going to take place in a boiler room, or some other place like that?
"Several ghosts of people who had died wrongful deaths lived under that bridge. Whenever it rained, those who crossed the bridge could hear them crying."
Suddenly Fang Mu swept everything in front of him onto the floor.
The papers and books all fell and fluttered to the ground. A bottle of ink was knocked onto his bed, blackening the sheets. A glass cup flew against the wall, shattering with a piercing sound.
Fang Mu tore at his hair, feeling as if his temples were thumping violently.
He couldn't keep doing this.
Professor Qiao's fate was still unknown and the next victim was in great danger. Yet here I am, he thought, guessing at words.
His chest felt painfully constricted, his every organ on fire. All he wanted to do was tear off his clothes, stick his hands into his chest and squeeze, pinch, and twist.