Chapter 83

It was already late at night when Jian Yao returned to the guest house at the foot of the mountain.

When she pushed open the door to enter, that man was sleeping motionless on the bed. Only a table lamp was still on, and his silhouette was indistinct. In the past, he had slept extremely well, as was the case for people who were generally of pure character. Sometimes, Jian Yao had even felt envious when she watched him sleep, as she felt that sleep was like a kind of enjoyment for him.

It was the same now. He lay ramrod straight, with the blanket covering his entire body, just like a log. Tonight, his features were also very serene.

With as little noise as possible Jian Yao washed up, changed into her pajamas, turned back a corner of the blanket and quietly lay down.

During this period of time when they were busy with the butterfly killer case, the two of them had either spent their nights at the station or gone back separately to sleep. This would be the first time in more than a year that they were sharing a bed.

Sharing a bed*.

*T/N 同床共枕 (tong chuang gong zhen) – lit. same bed, shared pillow; fig. to be married. Jian Yao is probably thinking about both ‘meanings’.

Previously, she had never considered that there was anything special about this phrase. However, now, on carefully considering the phrase, her heart felt a deep sorrow.

And also a little bit of regret . . . tonight, he had actually fallen asleep first! However, he could not see any more, so perhaps he was no longer able to . . .

She stared at his face. Still the same face, pale and thin, with elegant eyes and brows. His high nose bridge showed his willpower and resolute character, and his hair fell over his forehead.

Jian Yao could not stop herself from moving forward to kiss his face.

After a few seconds, his hands reached out to hold her waist and pull her forward fiercely. Jian Yao’s heart rate skyrocketed as she found herself lying completely on top of him.

He seemed to be half-asleep as he looked at her, the black hair on his forehead obscuring his eyes. However, his hands were clearly fully awake as they made their way into her pajamas.

“Mrs. Bo, I’ve waited a long time for you,” he said.

Jian Yao’s heart was thumping in her chest. But, another thought came to her. She lowered her head and slowly rubbed against his chest. Just like before, she said, “Not unless you promise me to let me go with you wherever you go, from now onwards.”

Bo Jinyan was silent.

Jian Yao softly said, “Ok?”

Unexpectedly, he sighed. “You’ve degenerated.” She was not at all like what she had been previously; she was now always making demands of him*.

*T/N 予取予求 (yu qu yi qiu) – take from me whatever you please; make unlimited demands.

Jian Yao hugged him and said, “I just know much better what I want.”

He did not speak, and was also unwilling to let her go. Lying on his chest, Jian Yao listened to his heart beat and felt her own heart melt.

However, his body was not the least bit willing to abandon its impulses. After a while, she heard him sigh faintly. Then, she unexpectedly felt him moving some part of his body against hers.

All the blood in Jian Yao’s body rushed to her face, but he did not speak, and neither did he relent. He simply carried on rubbing himself against her, up and down. Jian Yao knew she was done for. Initially, she had planned to seize the moment when his willpower was at its weakest to negotiate with him, but her line of defence was now utterly breached by his shameless and unabashed manoeuvres. After all, they had been separated for a year, and her body was tingling all over . . .

In the dark, Jian Yao’s hand slowly moved downwards.

His body immediately stilled.

Jian Yao’s throat was a little dry, but, in the end, she was a married young woman who was quite skilled in her actions. Besides, she knew his body very well, and this was his favourite . . .

He abruptly turned his head to face her. In the darkness, she seemed to see him opening his eyes, but they were devoid of lustre.

He grasped her wrist but did not stop her movements, and even seemed to be cooperating with her.

“I missed you so much.” A double entendre.

Jian Yao replied, “Me, too.”

“Carry on, don’t stop,” he said as he pressed his slightly hot face against her shoulder.

“Ok.”

. . . . . . .

“Jian Yao, there are some things I can’t tell you about right now. Please trust me absolutely.”

“Well, ok, I’ll listen to you in everything . . . in everything, except . . . “

“I hope that you’ll always laugh. You never laugh, now. Only your laughter can inspire me to go on, to fight with fervour.”

In the darkness, Jian Yao lifted her head and held his face, wanting to look at him directly. Instead, he lowered his head and completely sealed her mouth.

He touched her body; being so familiar with the darkness, he removed all her clothes and covered her body with his. Their warm and stubborn bodies.

“Can . . . you find it?” she could not help but whisper.

“Old hands don’t have to look at a map to be in complete control of the steering wheel,” he said coolly.

Jian Yao cursed An Yan silently but bit her lips and kept quiet.

After a while, he backed up his words with his actions, and even took the time to ask leisurely, “Do you have any other doubts, Mrs. Bo?”

“No, none . . .”

——

The next morning.

Bo Jinyan, Jian Yao, Fang Qing and others took the lead in an intensive search of the entire mountain area, while a large contingent of armed police followed them, awaiting their directions.

Shi Peng only had a fuzzy impression of which direction to head towards. A person would have to walk for several hours to reach halfway up a mountain. If you have ever been to Southern China, then you would know that there are many mountain ridges which are still desolate and uninhabited; there are many villages, where families and households could be separated by two mountains. Thus, when they reached their current location, they discovered that the path ended there; there was no way to go up.

“Where do we go next?” asked the criminal investigator who was in charge of the search. “Should we keep going up, or follow the path down the mountain and enter the next area?”

Fang Qing squatted by the path and carefully observed the direction of the light and the terrain, while Bo Jinyan listened as Jian Yao softly described the surroundings. After she had finished, he said, decisively, “Go up.”

Fang Qing nodded in agreement. “Go up.”

An Yan asked, “Why?”

Bo Jinyan replied, “‘He’ is not only meticulous in his thoughts and planning and a highly intelligent criminal, ‘he’ is also a ferocious bandit. ‘He’ can more effectively hide away higher up the mountain, and he would think nothing of having to cut his way through the vegetation. Moreover, over ten years ago, this mountain forest would not have been as dense with vegetation as it is now. So, for children like Shi Peng and Chen Jin, it would have been more enticing to explore further up the mountain.”

Fang Qing said, “I have also roughly taken stock of the terrain higher up the mountain, and it is not completely insurmountable. I agree we should go up.”

An Yan fiddled with the laptop he held, then looked up and said, “According to the satellite images, there are more than ten geological structures on the top of this mountain, which may include caves. Some are at overhanging cliffs and won’t be easy to locate.”

Bo Jinyan exclaimed, “What are we waiting for? For a miracle to descend? Let’s go!”

Fang Qing laughed. Jian Yao noticed him and An Yan trading glances and smiles, and looked over at Bo Jinyan. The expression in their eyes seemed to proclaim, hey, this poison-tongued guy is back!

Jian Yao walked by his side, looking at his tranquil profile which gave no hint of his razor-sharp abilities. It felt as if she had returned to the days of the Special Cases Unit, where the rapport and coordination among them had been so close, and all of them were razor-sharp. But, now, the four of them – hadn’t they all changed? They had become cold and harsh.

Indeed, the very phrase that Bo Jinyan used: cold and harsh.

He had said, with her by his side, his heart could not be cold and harsh.

No, she did not agree. Clearly, on the outside, they had become colder and harder, but, among themselves, their inner selves were all the more warm and soft, and their connections were on fire.

Jian Yao walked swiftly for a few paces before asking Bo Jinyan, “What do you think we will find?”

Bo Jinyan responded, “We may uncover a dusty history.”

Interestingly, after they had climbed up for a stretch, they spotted a path once again. However, it was not very obvious. The weeds and vegetation had been trampled on and the path was indistinct; it looked as if someone had walked this way and created the path. The search team continued to spread out and advance along the path. Very quickly, they reached an intersection of sorts.

From looking at the marks in the undergrowth, people had gone past on both sides.

Fang Qing took some time to crouch and examine the ground. Then, he said, “There are faint footprints on the right, cloth shoes, male, 42 inches. Should be between 160 and 165 cm tall, and it looks to be an old man. The heel has been worn down severely, and there are traces of cow dung in the middle of the footprint. Very likely a local farmer. On the left, the grass is dry and the path is not as distinct. From the looks of it, no one has passed that way for a long time.”

Bo Jinyan listened attentively to Fang Qing’s words while standing at the fork in the path. Then, he made a decision. “Go left. The path on the right is too close to the main path. ‘He’ would not choose such a location.”

……

A criminal investigator asked, “Which way should we take going forward? The slope on one side is in the sun, the other is in the shade.”

Fang Qing took stock of the situation and said, “Let’s search the shaded slope first. It’s easier to be exposed when the sun is shining directly.”

Bo Jinyan said, “Agreed.”

……

“There’s a cave on that cliff!” An Yan said gleefully.

Bo Jinyan said dryly, “No need to look, it’s a waste of energy.”

“Why?!”

Fang Qing coolly ‘bullied’ An Yan about his low IQ for anything except IT. “Because, it is too difficult to transport a corpse there; one might fall into a ravine or leave traces. Moreover, it would not be possible for the small kids that they were then to climb up there.”

China’s police officers were experts in employing the “huge crowd strategy”*. This, together with their superlative criminal investigation skills and dogged determination, had led to their remarkable track record, encapsulated in the phrase “murder cases will be solved”. However, if they were to search every square inch of the vast expanse of the mountain area in front of their eyes, it would take at least 500 men and several days of continual searching to yield results.

*T/N 人海战术 (ren hai zhan shu) – literally, a battle tactic (战术) involving a sea of people (人海).  This is a battle tactic in which a large number of troops attacks the opponent’s front in a dense formation. This makes it difficult for the enemy to use firepower to defeat the troops. Here, I think it means that the police force basically sends out a large number of officers to investigate the case.

But, today, under the direction of Bo Jinyan and his team, only 100 men, in just one day, had searched with more or less the same result.

As dusk slowly fell, the target area shrank inch by inch. They felt as if they were getting closer and closer to the truth.

With darkness approaching, the search increased in difficulty.

In front of them was a jungle.

The jungle was located about three-quarters of the way up the mountain, on the shady side, far away from the main path, and seemed to have barely any signs of human visitation. The ground was hard, so there was no way to grow any kind of valuable crop there. However, it wasn’t as if it was impossible to pass through the jungle. Although the map indicated that the jungle was far from the main path, Fang Qing had discovered that the back of the jungle, while seemingly a steep slope, actually consisted of tall stones with many shortcuts running through them. If one were to take these shortcuts through the stones, it was possible to reach the main path in an hour.

If they had not looked, they would never have known. It could be said that this place was an exceptional hiding place, even heaven-sent.

“Found something!” a criminal investigator yelled.

Jian Yao and the others headed in the direction of the voice, their bobbing flashlights shining through the curtain of night. To everyone’s astonishment, the light reflected off something in the depths of the forest, standing in a row.

The nearest police officer saw what it was clearly. “It’s wire netting!”

Everyone felt excitement bubbling up within them. In such a desolate and uninhabited place, deep in the mountains, man-made wire netting had suddenly made its appearance. How was it possible not to be excited?

The criminal investigators who were closest to the netting had already rushed ahead. “It looks like there really is a cave inside!”

He had surrounded the cave with wire netting?

Jian Yao and the others followed closely behind. At this point, Bo Jinyan’s heightened sense of hearing kicked in as he listened to and sorted out the sounds around him. “Be careful!” he called in warning. But it was already too late. The criminal investigator in the front had already slipped and fallen. In the underbrush, under a pile of dead leaves, someone had unexpectedly dug a trap! They heard the criminal investigator’s blood-curdling scream. When Fang Qing ran to the front, he saw a trap more than one metre in depth, and there were even a few pointed wooden stakes in the trap. The only good thing was that the stakes were not too long and the hole was not too deep, so although the criminal investigator had been pierced through his back and thighs and there was a lot of blood, his injuries did not seem to be fatal. The other criminal investigators immediately took action and lifted him gently and carefully out of the trap before sending him down the mountain for medical attention.

“It’s to prevent the wild animals from entering, and just in case people wander by,” Fang Qing said.

Bo Jinyan nodded.

The police avoided the traps and reached the wire netting. Fang Qing took out the tools he was carrying and cut through the wire netting. At this moment, An Yan stared at the wire netting and was suddenly transfixed.

It was because he saw a small black device on top of the wire netting. In a split second, there was a flash of light.

He pulled at Bo Jinyan’s arm and said, “Boss, I think we may already have alerted him. He must know that we’re here – there is a signal radio transmitter on top of the wire netting.”

Bo Jinyan responded, “That’s to be expected. He is so cautious and meticulous, it would be surprising if he had not set up an early warning device as his final line of defence. Moreover, since he’s out there committing crimes, that means he’s already decided to go all in and disregard the consequences.” With Jian Yao lending him an arm, he crossed over the wire netting.

The cave was very deep, dark and dry, and the cave walls were craggy.

At first, as they shone the flashlights around, they could find no traces that any human had been there. However, the ground was flat, which meant that it had evidently been tended to. In several places in the rock wall there were candle holders and the remains of candle wax.

Then, on the cave walls and the ground, very old, dark brown marks began to appear. Dribs and drabs at first, then in larger groups, more and more . . .

As they walked into the deepest part of the cave, a wide clearing opened up before their very eyes. It was a natural, circular, stone underground room. People were hung up all over the cave walls.

Not people; white bones and rotting corpses.

Some were still unmistakeably human, while others were reduced to white bones. There were men and women, both young and old.

Some were like Feng Yuexi, nailed like butterflies to the cave wall, the painting behind them.

For some others, the painting on the wall had blurred and become indistinct due to the passage of years. However, their hands and feet were bound and curled up, so they looked just like butterflies.

In total, there were 12 corpses, and thus, 12 butterflies. Hidden for all this time in this deep cave.

……

Jian Yao’s entire body was seized by a sudden chill, and she clung tightly to Bo Jinyan’s hand.

In that huge cave with more than ten police officers, nary a single one made a whisper of sound.

……

You may know that the real butterfly killer, in comparison with this poor excuse of a timid copycat, is calmer by far, and more callous by far. The human lives in his hand are no more than a butterfly pupa which he crushes to dust under his fingertips in the blink of an eye.

He had indulged for half a lifetime, suffered pain for half a lifetime.

No one could possibly understand, no one could forgive, no one could redeem.

And, now, he already had no way to endure the endless torment of that darkness, and he was about to break out of his cocoon as a butterfly to fly into the sunlight.

Then, to die willingly in a brief moment of bliss.