Xu Aiping was circling the questions she planned to cover in the next class on her exercise booklet.
Having just taught a graduating class last year, she knew the key points of each question type like the back of her hand, if not completely by heart. Unfortunately, the exam writing committee adjusted the tested material every year. For instance, two years ago they were emphasizing the practical application of reading and writing, but last year's new curriculum standard shifted to heavily testing the students' ability to "view." As a result, questions featuring images had increased dramatically, and not even veteran teachers dared to relax in the slightest.
Just then, there was a knock at the office door.
"Come in," Xu Aiping said without looking up. "What is it?"
A boy walked up to her and said bluntly, "Teacher, I need to request leave for this afternoon."
Xu Aiping raised her head—not because she needed to see who it was, but because those words struck her as absolutely audacious.
"No!" Xu Aiping slammed her pen onto the desk and frowned. "Zhang Shutong, I haven't even dealt with you regarding yesterday's matter yet. What are you trying to do now?"
"Teacher Song is leaving this afternoon. I'm going to the harbor to see him off."
"What does Teacher Song's departure have to do with you?"
"His health isn't good, his car is totaled, and he still has to move things out of his dormitory. I'm going to help."
"You..."
Xu Aiping's temples throbbed. She pressed her fingers against her forehead, thinking to herself that this kid certainly had plenty of excuses. Yesterday his arm wasn't well, today his teacher's health wasn't good—why couldn't anything just be fine? Yet, this kind of excuse was truly impossible to find fault with.
The leaves she had approved were more numerous than the test papers these students had ever done. The lowest tier of lies often revolved around the concepts of birth, old age, sickness, and death. For example, some students would claim to feel unwell at the drop of a hat just to go to the infirmary, or how an uncle passed away last month and now a grandfather died this month...
But by the same token, the most troublesome reasons also could not escape those same concepts.
Unfortunately, this student was telling the truth.
She had seen Teacher Song Nanshan this morning. In reality, he hadn't just appeared for the fourth period like the kids thought; he had arrived at the school right after morning reading ended.
However, the two of them had been talking in the office the entire time—discussing the habits of the students in the class, where their English skills were weakest, and which kids caused worry or peace of mind. His health truly was poor; he had to stop and catch his breath after every few sentences. Honestly, she was somewhat dissatisfied with his approach, because visiting a graduating class was something that could easily have been scheduled for the afternoon instead of midday.
A tiny bit of fresh news on a campus was a stone thrown into the water, kicking up splashes rather than ripples. Kids this age were like a pot of boiling water; she could already predict that they would probably remain restless until dismissal this afternoon before finally settling down.
And right now, here was one whose mind had already drifted far away.
During their conversation this morning, the student named Zhang Shutong had been one of her primary focuses. By now, she had pretty much figured out his temperament—taciturn and stubborn to the bone, a classic mule-like personality.
"I won't say anything discouraging; it's a good thing that you have this kind of consideration," Xu Aiping took off her glasses and began to wipe them clean. "But you aren't a child either, so don't just act willfully. You have to think about it—if every other student requested leave and clamored to see your Teacher Song off just like you, would this afternoon's classes still happen? Would the school's order still function?"
"So you only need to approve leave for me alone." A certain resolve was hidden within the other party's calm tone, as if he had long anticipated this line of reasoning. "If anyone else asks you, you can just say someone has already gone, so they can focus on class."
She took a deep breath. "Are you utterly set on going?"
"Teacher Song had a huge impact on me." These words were quite clever, avoiding a direct answer of whether he was going or not. "There will be very few opportunities to meet in the future."
Xu Aiping stopped speaking.
What was there to criticize about seeing off a former teacher? It was practically flawless. Forget about blocking him—if it were any other student, they ought to be praised in front of the class. She was a teacher herself and didn't care to play the villain, but she similarly disliked the feeling of things escaping her control.
Yet Xu Aiping knew that once talk reached this point, there was no longer any need to continue the conversation.
Was she supposed to say, "What if I just refuse to grant you leave?" Or simply act as though she hadn't heard his words and leave him out in the cold?
An average kid might have stood in place, at a loss, but that wouldn't work on this student.
Some students simply couldn't be controlled.
Regardless of whether your answer was yes or no, he merely observed the superficial rules to maintain a surface harmony, giving everyone a way out.
Therefore, saying anything further along those lines would not only be stupid, but would also make her look thoroughly incompetent as a teacher. Most importantly, she didn't doubt for a second that he would rip away the final layer of pretense; the next time this student wanted to go out, he probably wouldn't even ask for leave.
Ultimately, she wasn't doing this to pick a fight with a student.
Xu Aiping picked up the pen on her exercise booklet. "Go quickly and come back quickly."
"Thank you, Teacher."
She wrote down a few characters, then gave her habitual lecture: "Xiao Zhang, once this matter is over, you need to focus your mind. I have high expectations for you. Don't have any misunderstandings toward me, and don't develop an adversarial mindset. Set a good example for the students in class, understand?"
The other party nodded and said yes, making her slightly more satisfied. "Alright, you can go. Pull the door shut on your way out..."
"Teacher, I also want to help someone else request leave."
"...What did you say?"
"I'd like to request leave for Classmate Lu Qinglian as well."
Xu Aiping finally slapped the desk and said angrily, "Zhang Shutong, don't push your luck with me!"
"She was specifically requested by Teacher Song," Zhang Shutong explained. "He said she's the one he's most worried about among all the students. I believe Teacher Song should have mentioned this to you."
Hearing this, Xu Aiping forcibly suppressed her anger. She knew this was also the truth; Song Nanshan had mentioned this girl repeatedly during the morning. She rather liked this well-behaved girl herself, so she couldn't help but expend a bit more care on her.
She heard Zhang Shutong say, "Don't worry, she and I won't be in a puppy love relationship. We weren't before, and we won't be in the future."
"Who said you were in a puppy love relationship?" Xu Aiping suddenly calmed down.
"Teacher Song already warned me," Zhang Shutong added. "Yesterday's matter was a lack of consideration on my part, which might have caused you to have some misunderstandings about us. I just want to say that no matter which angle you look at it from, puppy love wouldn't be this flagrant. There are no evening self-study classes at school, so there's no need to specifically choose school hours, don't you think?"
"Did you have this intention from the moment you walked through the door?"
"Yes." The boy didn't deny it. "But I wasn't deliberately playing tricks; I was just worried that saying it right away would make you angry."
Xu Aiping fell silent once more.
She carefully sized up the boy before her. He was quite tall, with a somewhat messy head of black hair, cool eyes, a straight nose, and a quiet, reserved demeanor.
At such a young age, his face hid a weariness that even she couldn't quite fathom. In short, with this kind of appearance, he was the exact type that any teacher would guard against with absolute vigilance.
Perhaps pairing the two together as desk mates had been a mistake from the start.
But now was not the time to think about those things.
Xu Aiping reviewed the words the other party had spoken since entering the door. She had made concessions bit by bit until she nodded in agreement, thinking she would just let him go this time. Yet she hadn't expected this kid to execute a sudden turnaround—first claiming that Lu Qinglian was the student Song Nanshan was most worried about, then piercing through the paper window pane of suspicion regarding their puppy love.
All sorts of reasons blocked her until she was speechless. Both for public and private reasons, she had nothing left to say, and the other party had very sensibly given her a way out.
In the end, this gray-haired teacher let out a sigh.
She realized she had never truly understood this student.
How was he a mule? Even if he were a mule, he was a crafty little mule!
When he returned to the classroom, Lu Qinglian was reading at her seat.
Zhang Shutong walked to her side. The two did not engage in any dialogue like "excuse me" or "please hurry."
Lu Qinglian merely raised her gaze and gently folded down a corner of the book page. "Now?"
Zhang Shutong knew it was because they had agreed this morning that he had serious business to tell her, with the location set for the rooftop.
"We're not going there anymore." He shook his head. "Change of plans. We're going somewhere else."
"Classmate Zhang Shutong, when you say there is a change of plans, it is best to first explain what the original plan was." Lu Qinglian stood up.
"We're going to the hospital right now. Behind the hospital is a house, which is the entrance to that basement."
There were only the two of them in the classroom, so they didn't need to be deliberately discreet when speaking.
"That far?"
"It should be an air-defense shelter. By the way, did you know there are air-defense shelters on the island?"
"I've heard of it."
The two left the classroom. They walked rather quickly, and as they brushed past the sparse silhouettes around the campus, Zhang Shutong quietly recounted those discoveries and conjectures to her.
Lu Qinglian's brows knitted tighter and tighter. It wasn't until she heard him mention the photograph of the "fake Lu Qinglian" that she finally asked, "Where is the photograph?"
"It's still there. The three of them were present at the time, so I took it down in advance, but later I decided to keep things as they were and pasted it back."
As he spoke, he tapped his phone and handed it to Lu Qinglian. "But I found a chance to snap a picture. If you had a phone, I could have sent it to you last night, or contacted you directly... Can you see anything?"
"No." Lu Qinglian merely spared it a glance before handing the phone back to him.
"I thought so too." Zhang Shutong looked at the screen, which showed a pitch-black silhouette whose only identifiable characteristics were long hair and a green robe. "It's too dark down there; it's either overexposed or completely blurry. The original photograph has far more detail."
"At least it proves you really saw that thing."
"It's enough that you're willing to believe it."
"Classmate Zhang Shutong, if I didn't believe you, who do you think would skip class with you the day right after skipping class?" Lu Qinglian said in a cold tone.
Zhang Shutong didn't know what was up with her; it seemed her mood had turned rather poor after eating that hot pot.
He turned around. "I requested leave, and I requested it for you too. This doesn't count as skipping class, so rest assured on that point."
"You... requested leave?" Lu Qinglian's gaze turned uncharacteristically strange for a split second.
"I used the excuse of seeing Mr. Song off the island, and the homeroom teacher reluctantly agreed. But it's also true that Mr. Song is leaving this afternoon," Zhang Shutong said casually.
Lu Qinglian truly was intelligent; she made the connection almost instantly. "Did you go out just now to find an opportunity to tell Teacher Song?"
But this time, she guessed wrong.
"No, or rather, I only told him half of it. But it was nothing more than an indirect probe to ask if he had any other discoveries over the years—sounds, silhouettes, things like that."
"The result?"
"Actually, those things were basically asked yesterday in the dormitory, and you already know the answer. The dormitory is on the second floor, separated from the basement by another level, so it would be very hard to hear any sounds. And the tunnel entrance is at the hospital, so the probability of seeing a silhouette appearing is likewise nonexistent. As a teacher, his daily itinerary is very fixed. Even if I told him about the existence of the basement, he wouldn't have any clues."
"What about the conjecture regarding the 'clay figures'?" Lu Qinglian asked.
"I didn't even mention it."
Zhang Shutong knew exactly what would happen if he told Mr. Song at this time that his ex-girlfriend's corpse might have been stolen long ago.
"You mean you spent half an hour but didn't even enter the main topic, and now you want to go to the basement?" Lu Qinglian frowned, a trace of sternness entering her tone. "What exactly are you dawdling for?"
But before he could open his mouth, Lu Qinglian said expressionlessly again, "Sorry, my attitude just now was bad. But I hope you can understand that hiding this kind of thing won't lead to a result. Or have you not tasted enough of the bitter fruits from before?"
"I originally wanted to tell him, but his mother needs an operation, and it's very urgent. Otherwise, Mr. Song wouldn't have rushed back at midday."
Hearing this, Lu Qinglian moved her lips but ultimately said nothing.
The two walked side by side across the campus, and Zhang Shutong's voice calmed down as well. "The original plan was to go to the basement together after dismissal, but there's no time now. We have to check it one more time before he leaves. Last night, I might have missed some details. If there can be a new discovery today—I mean the kind that has a strong connection to him personally..."
"That will decide whether or not to tell him?"
"Yeah." Zhang Shutong paused. "I understand your concern. All I can say is that I won't keep it hidden forever, not even for the sake of his sacrifices over the years—that's the bare minimum of respect. But for one thing, he really doesn't know anything, and for another, this timing is too delicate. So, if there are still no other clues this time..."
By the end of his words, Zhang Shutong didn't have much expression left. As he walked, he looked at the bare branches of the tree by the school gate. "Just treat it as me taking matters into my own hands. I hope you'll cooperate."
"Let's go," Lu Qinglian merely said.
They still went to the bike shed to push out their bicycles first. But currently there were students passing by the school gate, so it wasn't good to mount the bikes immediately. Zhang Shutong pushed his bike out of the school gates, and once the surrounding crowd thinned out a bit, the two of them rode their bicycles through the urban area, just like yesterday.
The destination this time was the hospital.
Their time was actually very tight.
Because after Mr. Song bid farewell to the students, his next stop was likewise the dormitory.
The four of them had left in a hurry last night. Even though they had done their best to clean up the scene, there was one thing they couldn't achieve—at most they could push that secret door back into place, but they could do absolutely nothing about everything outside the secret door, such as the poster that had already been ripped to shreds.
No matter how many people there were, they could do nothing about things "outside the door."
Unless one person was left outside the door to coordinate, but how could they spare a person under those circumstances?
So even if Zhang Shutong didn't say anything, once Mr. Song returned to the dormitory to pack his luggage, he would still discover the anomaly.
This was why he had to request leave so suddenly.
Zhang Shutong led Lu Qinglian to the small shack behind the hospital. This was winter, so the ground was still filled with mud water, though it was slightly shallower than yesterday. Still, it could submerge the surface of their shoes.
"The medicine applied to your foot?"
"It's fine."
While speaking, Lu Qinglian had already taken off her green robe. Zhang Shutong caught the clothing tossed through midair. Invisibly, it felt a bit like being on a film set, where a popular actress hurried to change her costume after shooting one scene to perform in the next.
"Wait for me, no need to come over."
That was just how she spoke today, her emotions even more detached than usual. Then, Lu Qinglian took the lead in stepping into the room, the mud water submerging all the way to her ankles.
Zhang Shutong told her the precise location. For the secret door that had required four people working together to pull open last night, Lu Qinglian merely bent her body. Then, using her waist as a fulcrum, she exerted force with both hands and lifted the iron door up.
Of course, her strength hadn't reached a level that far exceeded an ordinary person's either. Zhang Shutong discovered that most of the time, it was just that Lu Qinglian's method of exerting force possessed a different technique. For instance, right now, the iron door opened just a crack, and the mud water poured toward her feet like a stream, but she didn't continue to force it open bluntly like the few of them had. Instead, she paused slightly, seemingly searching for the optimal point of leverage.
Then she focused her mind and took a breath, her waist sinking. The power that erupted all of a sudden was countless times more efficient than pure brute force; it was hard to imagine that it had been hidden inside such a supple and slender body just a moment ago.
It resembled Tai Chi quite a bit, carrying a distinct sense of using four ounces to move a thousand pounds.
The iron door was pulled open by her with a sudden jerk, and then crashed to the ground entirely on momentum.
"I said I didn't need your help," Lu Qinglian adjusted her breathing. Her chest rose and fell slightly, but it didn't affect her sharp gaze in the slightest. "This is completely meaningless."
The destination of her gaze was his own legs. Zhang Shutong glanced at his feet, which were likewise submerged in the mud water.
Logically speaking, he ought to have waited outside in a dry place, but he had walked inside without realizing it. Even if he couldn't help, he couldn't just act like a young master, right?
But Zhang Shutong wasn't in the mood to say useless words today either. He didn't explain, and Lu Qinglian stopped speaking further. Once her breathing stabilized, the two walked down the stairs one after the other, their surroundings swallowed by darkness.
Next, they would traverse a dark and narrow tunnel.
Zhang Shutong turned on his phone flash. They quickly reached the dry area. He first paid attention to the footprints on the ground; they were still covered in a layer of dust, indicating that the probability of someone having come here between last night and now was close to zero.
The walls had been checked too; there was still only a single trace of writing reading "03."
Only two sets of footsteps remained in the quiet tunnel. Their shoes were soaked through, emitting a squelching water sound as they stepped on the ground.
Zhang Shutong pushed open the door to the basement room.
"It's right here."
He held the phone light for Lu Qinglian, the faint illumination shining on that wall, and said beside her, "Twenty minutes have already passed. Mr. Song 's side is about to arrive."
"I know," Lu Qinglian said without turning her head.
She stared intently at the photographs on the wall. Just like Zhang Shutong yesterday, she walked along this spiderweb-like photo wall from start to finish, ultimately stopping on that figure in the green robe.
Zhang Shutong came to her side. They had come in a hurry, and their only light source was a phone. Yesterday there had been four phones at any rate; though faint, they could check different areas separately, but today he could only accompany Lu Qinglian.
"The dates aren't clues."
"I think so too."
The dates these photographs were taken had absolutely no pattern. The two focused their attention elsewhere at the same time. It was just that Zhang Shutong felt he cared more about the other party's stance, whereas Lu Qinglian cared more about the identity of the person in the photograph.
Zhang Shutong was also looking at that photograph. Although he had already gained a general impression last night, the "fake Lu Qinglian" in the photo was raising a hand, her wide sleeve sliding down because of it to reveal an arm.
In Zhang Shutong's view, this looked more like a movement before launching an attack, just like the long-haired woman on the night of the avalanche.
The person in the basement looked more like they had snapped this picture right before engaging or fleeing.
"There's a question I've wanted to ask for a long time," Zhang Shutong asked after a moment. "At what point in the deceased's life does the image presented by a clay figure freeze? If they are corpses, then why do they wear the clothes they wore in life?"
"I don't know either."
"What about the process when you reclaimed her back then?"
"Submerge it in water, and the sculpture floats up."
Perhaps a corpse wasn't the only condition.
After a long while, Lu Qinglian finally withdrew her gaze from the photograph. She said softly, "As expected."
In fact, this instinctive phrase was quite thought-provoking. "As expected" implied the meaning of "confirmation" and "long anticipated."
It meant she had long held a conjecture in her heart, which was now verified by this photograph.
But if a clay figure was equivalent to a resurrection of the deceased, then Lu Qinglian shouldn't have said "as expected."
Because she was still alive, standing here perfectly fine; how could she possibly conjecture that she herself was dead?
But after speaking, she shifted her gaze, checking for other traces around the desk and the wooden bed.
Sometimes Zhang Shutong felt that working with her required a bit of intellect, or perhaps Mr. Song was right—if the other party was a book that needed to be flipped through slowly, and if you couldn't keep up with her line of thought, you might not even be able to tear open the wrapping paper on the outside of the book.
"You noticed it too?" Zhang Shutong asked an even more seemingly random question.
"It's my own body; I should be more familiar with it than you."
Zhang Shutong looked at Lu Qinglian's arm, then at the arm of the woman in the photograph. He didn't know whether to lament the coincidence of fate, but the photograph just happened to capture the woman's left arm.
On the woman's left arm, there was only skin illuminated by the flash.
And Zhang... Shutong knew that on Lu Qinglian's left arm...
"Could you let me look at your birthmark one more time?"
"No," she refused coldly.
Zhang Shutong wasn't surprised; he remembered her mentioning before that she felt that red birthmark of hers was very ugly.
"But I still need to confirm—is this birthmark truly just a birthmark?"
Lu Qinglian nodded her chin.
Zhang Shutong withdrew his gaze. Now that the person in question had confirmed it, it could verify that his conjecture was correct.
Perhaps the person in the photograph, as well as the silhouette seen in the restricted area in the past, wasn't Lu Qinglian.
He looked back at the woman's face—blurry, but the general features were quite similar. Yet similarity didn't prove anything, because Zhang Shutong could also find many places on Mother Gu that were similar to Gu Qiumian.
"When did you have this conjecture?" Zhang Shutong asked. "That this person is actually someone else?"
"Last Sunday. At the temple."
"It seems I'm the one who overcomplicated things." Zhang Shutong shook his head. In the past, he had always felt that Lu Qinglian's persistence lay in searching for a fake version of herself. However, that impression still lingered from when they first discovered the clay figures; in reality, her target had already quietly shifted.
No wonder her attitude at the hospital that day had been a bit unusual.
"So who do you think it would be?" Zhang Shutong asked in puzzlement. "A sister?"
"I have no sisters."
"An elder?"
This time, Lu Qinglian didn't answer yes or no.
She said softly, "The connection between each generation of temple keepers is bloodline."
"An aunt?"
"Likewise none."
Zhang Shutong stopped speaking.
Because this was likewise a deduction that wasn't very complicated.
Lu Qinglian's grandmother was still alive, so an "elder" wouldn't be from an alternate generation. As for her grandmother's elders, how long had it been since the appearance of the clay figures, and what kind of gene could be that powerful?
Then it could only be—
"Your mother?"