Chapter 181 - My Costar And I Find The Answer To The Last Mystery

There's something almost poetic about Si Wang's plans being thwarted by the cruel unpredictability of war.

In any case, Yao Shen could see how he used memory as his weapon to try and wrest control of Yao Shen, until this current incarnation.

Until Yao Shen almost gave him his victory -- but in the end became his downfall.

He wipes the tears off his face and gets up to his feet, finally opening the bedroom door.

He finds Xin Hulei smoking by the open windows, a cigarette clutched tightly between his index and middle finger.

Yao Shen regrets worrying him, but he doesn't regret what he has found.

He has the solution to one last mystery on the tip of his fingers -- at least a partial solution, there's some of it he still doesn't understand. 

"How are you?" Xin Hulei asks, his tone more casual than he feels.

"I'm fine." He nods towards the cigarette between his fingers. "Finish that, there's somewhere we need to go."

Xin Hulei nods, pulling hard on the cigarette's filter. He doesn't question Yao Shen, he's immediately ready to do as he says.

It sends a delicious thrill down Yao Shen's spine.

He's going to do something about all the ideas he's been getting when they return. When he has finally put this whole thing behind him.

---

He tells Xin Hulei where to take them. He's confused at first. Not understanding why Yao Shen wants him to bring them to the park just behind his apartment in Beijing. They're wearing hoodies over baseball hats, probably being too conspicuous about their desire to hide their identities, but at night, and in such a busy city as Beijing, no one spares them a second glance.

Yao Shen traces the steps he recalls from the dreams of that last reincarnation, the bullet riddled streets of his mind almost impossible to recognise, impossible to match to their modern day incarnations -- pristine and whole, absent the pockmarks of war.

Still, he recognises the building where the soldier Yao Shen bunked down with his comrades. He used to walk by it every day when he came back from the nearest grocery store.

Funny how that worked out in the end.

It's striking exactly because it's a low building of only five floors in a neighbourhood of towering skyscrapers. 

He follows the steps he saw in his dreams, through the outside stairways and the communal verandas connecting all the apartment units and knocks on the door 1R.

He hears the sound of a child's excited "I'll get it!", and then a boy of around eleven opens the door.

He looks up at Yao Shen and Xin Hulei in confusion, not recognising them he screams loudly for his mother.

A woman in her late thirties comes to the door, but unlike her son, she recognises them immediately. 

She's visibly taken aback by their presence at her door, but pulls herself together remarkably fast. "Is this about the drama?"

Xin Hulei, who still doesn't know what they're doing here -- but is about to find out -- goes very still.

Yao Shen has no idea who this woman is, but depending on how things go, he thinks they might just have found Shi Shi.

"Hi, yes, sorta," he clears his throat. "Are you the author of 'Shizun, this disciple will have to kill you?"

The woman laughs, and then rubs her temple with her thumbnail. She smiles sheepishly. "I guess you could say that."

Yao Shen keeps smiling. "Do you mind if we go inside?"

---

The woman introduces herself as Yan Jiang and offers them tea. Xin Hulei declines, but Yao Shen accepts.

She sits on an armchair across from the loveseat Xin Hulei and Yao Shen are currently squeezed into.

"Well, I have to admit I don't know what this is about...I'm actually a little confused, because I signed a contract about how my identity..."

Yao Shen smiles reassuringly at her. "Don't worry, there has been no breach of contract." He waves vaguely in the air next to his head. "You can call it a fateful coincidence."

She doesn't look any more enlightened.

"I've recently found I had an ancestor, who fought in the war," he looks around at her nice, comfortable house. "He used to live right here, with some other ten men and women."

Her eyes widen. She knows exactly what he means.

"I have also discovered, that this ancestor was a writer."

She's up and out of her seat before he's even done speaking. She returns with a clear plastic file filled to bursting with yellowing crumbling paper scraps. She hands it to Yao Shen.

"It's all there, I kept everything." She takes back her seat. "I guess I always thought this day would come. One day someone would find out."

She sighs. "I'm sure we can come to an arrangement regarding royalties-"

Yao Shen stops her. "I'm not interested in that."

She frowns. "Then what..."

"I just want to know, how you went from this," he lifts one corner of the thick file on his lap," to 'Shizun, this disciple will have to kill you'."

For the first time, Xin Hulei intervenes. "Be as thorough as you need, we have time, filming has been put on hold for the time being."

Yan Jiang sucks on a deep breath, and tells them everything.

---

She inherited the apartment from her grandfather upon his death, and just in time too. 

"I had just found out I was pregnant, and well, my son's father disappeared as soon as he heard," she smiles tightly, all these years later it's still a painful memory. "My family was disappointed, and I felt isolated from everyone. I could have gotten an abortion, I think a lot of people would have in my place, but I was so lonely and sad, I thought at least a child would keep me company." She laughs, self-deprecatingly. "His legs would be too short to run away from me, for a long time."

Yao Shen laughs too, but he feels sorry for her. That Yan Jiang felt that she had to have a child to have some company. Both her and her son are clearly happy now, and everything worked out in the end. But he can't even imagine how hard it must have been for her in the beginning.

"But, money...you can't feed a child on hopes and dreams," she shrugs, "or with depression."

She has a good sense of humour. Yao Shen can see why the novel ended up being so popular, despite its convoluted and often nonsensical plot.

"So I needed money, and I started searching every nook and cranny of the apartment, looking for any heirloom I could sell." She points at the file again. "That's when I found that, stuck in a whole in the wall."

She sighs, recalling the thrill of discovery. "It did feel like fate. One name kept jumping up to me, 'Yan Shuyi'...It uses the same character as my surname. I felt like fate was taking me by the hand and saying 'here you go, you dumb bitch'." She laughs at her own joke. "I didn't need fate to call me a dumb bitch twice."

Yao Shen thinks Yan Jiang is anything but dumb.

She smiles self-consciously and takes a sip of her tea. "Anyway, you'll be able to see for yourself, but, most of the writings are a little rambling, and they don't make much sense, but...they are heartfelt, and moving." 

A little sad smile curls up on the corner of her lips.

"Maybe a better writer could have wrested into a great epic novel for the ages, but webnovels were just getting really mainstream eleven years ago...and that's all I could think to do. My son would be born in a few months, and I needed money fast, no matter how little."

"So you adapted some of my ancestor's writing, into your novel," Yao Shen asks, following all of this set up to its natural conclusion: the mystery of Shi Shi.

The entire reason as to why despite the wild success of their first novel Shi Shi never published anything else.

Why they never replied to comments or acknowledged the novel's fans in any way.

Yao Shen could imagine Yan Jiang's anxiety at fielding questions regarding the nature, organisation, and structure of the world she had created. It's not as if she could answer: 'I don't know, I found most of the story inside a wall in my apartment, I'm just moving pieces around.'

She gestures noncommittally. "Ah well, if you read it you'll see I took, big, big liberties. I have the impression your ancestor had a tragedy in mind, but I wanted to write a romantic webnovel," she shrugs. "No one wants to read 300 chapters of characters pining for each other and then dying tragically."

Yao Shen can't barely stop himself from bursting into laughter. Ah, she has no idea. "No, I imagine not."

She's about to say something else when the sound of glass breaking comes in from the kitchen.

Yan Jiang closes her eyes, adopting the expression of someone who's used to such things, but no less annoyed by them. She smiles apologetically at Yao Shen and Xin Hulei before getting up from her chair.

"Yan Shuyi, what are you doing in there?"