"Yes, that driver is the man from the basement.
"How did I figure it out? That night at the mall, he walked away without looking back, which showed he was confident he could find us. At first, I thought that because we're students, he narrowed the location down to the school. But then I thought, was there any other channel besides that? Excluding everyone's parents, the only person left who knew what we were doing during this period was that driver...
"Not to mention... phew, when we sent Old Song off that time, he was the one who helped. I said before that he must have seen the few of us long ago, but when exactly? Maybe it was that time. I don't remember if the man went up to the dormitory building, but if he did, he would have discovered the hidden door we blocked with the bed. So back at the warehouse, I originally wanted to ask if you noticed anything unusual about that man..."
Just as Zhang Shutong finished speaking, a clear, cold voice came from the other end of the phone:
"Classmate Zhang Shutong."
It was as if he could see Lu Qinglian knitting her brows:
"You had better not make strange noises while on the phone."
"Oh, sorry. I'm running."
Zhang Shutong came to a stop, panting slightly.
"Running?"
"Exercising."
It was Thursday morning, seven o'clock. He was running toward the school while talking on the phone.
There was a small cart selling stuffed flatbreads by the roadside, perfect for grabbing breakfast on the way. While waiting, Zhang Shutong covered the microphone and said:
"I asked him. That man's targets were only the sad and smiling ones. He has no interest in the other foxes... Mm, so it can be understood that he really did give up.
"In addition, as far as things stand, he harbors no malice toward us. Although that's built on the premise that those two foxes are already useless, at least we don't need to stay on high alert."
After saying a few more words to Lu Qinglian, the stuffed flatbread was ready. Zhang Shutong paid and took a bite, discovering that this flatbread stand had creatively added crab sticks, reminding him of the crab he ate at Gu Qiumian's house last night.
To be able to eat crab in winter—supposedly imported sea crab—she truly lived up to being the eldest young lady.
"Details," Lu Qinglian said. The background noise on her end was very loud, seemingly on her way to school as well.
"We were in the car at the time, and they were waiting for us inside to start dinner, so there wasn't much time to talk. I only confirmed his stance and the possibility of establishing communication," Zhang Shutong said. "More information was obtained after dinner, on his way driving me home."
"Did you do it on purpose?"
"What on purpose?"
"Why didn't you tell me last night?"
"The matter of disguising as Ruoping was probably exposed," Zhang Shutong explained. "Even though he wasn't the one who drove Ruoping home, communication between drivers is inevitable. He might have known long ago that the person acting with me was you. Before exposing his identity, any abnormal move would have made him vigilant instead."
"You know what I mean," Lu Qinglian's voice grew a bit colder. "You could have completely made a phone call after it was over."
"That..." Zhang Shutong paused. "Where are you now?"
"Five more minutes."
"Let's talk on the phone."
Zhang Shutong swallowed the flatbread in a few bites, bought another bottle of water, and spoke as he walked:
"The harvest was quite significant. I asked him about the mud figurine. Do you remember, from the information you got from the mural in the temple back then, 'creating' a mud figurine requires placing a person's remains in the forbidden zone? We even suspected back then whether someone had stolen Teacher Song's girlfriend's remains, but we never found time to confirm it."
"However, the answer is," Zhang Shutong said in a low voice, "our guess was wrong."
"That man investigated long ago. Her grave remains consistent with when she was buried."
Lu Qinglian asked:
"Did he open the coffin?"
"He probably didn't, but when burying, a seal needs to be made on the coffin lid, and that seal was never opened. Who would go through the trouble of stealing the remains, putting them back after use, and then sealing it back up untouched... In short, the condition for a mud figurine's birth doesn't require anyone's remains. This might explain why the mud figurine could transform into the appearance of three people."
There was silence on the other end of the line for a good while:
"Are you saying... a coincidence?"
No emotion could be heard in Lu Qinglian's voice, but Zhang Shutong could roughly guess her mood. Previously, they believed there was a mastermind behind the birth of the mud figurines, but looking at it now, that wasn't the case.
The death of the woman named "Yun" was merely due to a car accident, not anyone's scheme—let alone the fact that her remains were still safe and sound to this day.
"I thought so too back then. Was it an inevitability or a coincidence? If it really was a coincidence..." If it really was a coincidence, then everything they had done lost its meaning.
"So it's the former?" Lu Qinglian said calmly. "An inevitability?"
"Mm," Zhang Shutong gave a soft response, recalling his astonishment at the time.
...
"A coincidence?" Zhang Shutong couldn't help repeating.
"I'm not sure."
The man sat in the driver's seat. He didn't smoke, so the car windows were tightly closed, stickered with very dark glass film. The faint light upstairs could be seen through it. Zhang Shutong withdrew his gaze from the employee dormitory upstairs and looked back at that man.
Sitting there, he didn't make a single tiny movement. Unlike Old Song, who couldn't keep still, shaking his legs and rubbing his chin, the man's hands rested on his knees, like a motionless statue.
He looked straight ahead, yet one couldn't determine the focal point from his eyes. He seemed to be looking at something, yet seemed to be looking at nothing.
"However, if you want to investigate, you can follow this to look for it."
Zhang Shutong accepted the photo the man pulled out from his coat.
In the photo was a short-haired woman. Zhang Shutong could naturally recognize her identity, but the woman's face was much more tender than in memory. Zhang Shutong only then realized that her age before passing should have been around twenty-five, whereas when this one was taken, she looked only seventeen or eighteen.
Zhang Shutong also knew that the woman named "Yun" would show dimples when she smiled—most of the photos he saw in Old Song's dormitory were like that. This time, however, he rarely saw a smile on her face. By the light of the dome lamp, he clearly saw the content on the photo and fell into silence for a long time.
The woman crossed her arms, and within her arms, she seemed to be holding something.
Zhang Shutong saw the ears of a fox.
...
"Teacher Song's lover might know far more than we imagined," Zhang Shutong said slowly.
"Seven or eight years ago, that fox was in her hands?"
"Basically confirmed."
"Which one was it?" Lu Qinglian knitted her brows.
"It was..."
When saying this sentence, Zhang Shutong stopped in his tracks and saw Lu Qinglian, who had likewise stopped at the school gate.
Their gazes met, and then they hung up the phone.
They had arrived fairly early, so there weren't many people at the school gate at this time. Zhang Shutong pulled out a photo from his pocket:
"See for yourself."
Lu Qinglian lowered her eyelids:
"Unidentifiable?"
"Mm."
Zhang Shutong wasn't clear about "Yun's" situation when that photo was taken, much less able to distinguish what intention she had in leaving this photo behind.
What could be confirmed, however, was that both she and the photographer considered the fox statue to be something taboolike and hidden deep, because the statue in the woman's arms didn't even reveal its front face. If it weren't an insider, any other person coming along wouldn't think this was a statue of a fox.
"There are words on the back too."
Lu Qinglian flipped the photo over and saw two words written on the back:
"Endpoint."
"Where was it found?"
"In the crevice of the coffin. The feeling it gave me was that the man didn't seem to care much about things other than those two statues, so his investigation stopped here."
Zhang Shutong stepped onto the stairs first. Over ten hours ago, they had searched the classrooms like this as well. The difference was that back then, it was pitch-black before their eyes, and many questions were at a complete loss; whereas now it was daytime, and suddenly a huge step forward had been taken.
"Mud figurines, foxes... it's getting more and more complex..." Zhang Shutong let out a sigh. "Classmate Lu Qinglian, continue collaborating?"
"Classmate Zhang Shutong," she said expressionlessly, "you still haven't answered me why you didn't make a phone call last night. If you think it's very interesting to tell me such important information only on the second day..."
"It's not just that."
Zhang Shutong rarely interrupted Lu Qinglian's words.
Now at the corner of the stairs where it was quiet and deserted, Zhang Shutong leaned against the stair handrail and turned his head to look at the young girl's face:
"The reason I didn't tell you was because of another piece of intel."
Zhang Shutong said word by word:
"The mud figurine was originally supposed to be the incarnation of successive temple priestesses after their death."
...
Zhang Shutong watched Lu Qinglian walk far away, then walked downstairs again.
Just as Zhang Shutong arrived at the school gate, he saw a black sedan come to a steady stop.
The rear seat window rolled down, revealing an oval face. Zhang Shutong temporarily acted as a driver, helping open the car door for the eldest young lady.
"Where is that person?" He looked toward the driver's seat, but it was a young man.
"Haven't seen him at all," Gu Qiumian knitted her eyebrows slightly.
Zhang Shutong nodded.
After finishing dinner at the villa last night, he didn't stay long, unable to even drink the tea Nanny Wu brewed before hurriedly taking his leave.
He had considered whether to tell everyone at the villa about the man's abnormality and wait for the bodyguards to swarm up and subdue him, but in the end he still didn't do so.
Since the man was willing to provide some information, forcing him would only backfire. What's more, since the other party could recover mud figurines, it was naturally impossible for him to be captured without a fight.
However, what surprised Zhang Shutong was that the other party was only startled for an instant when his identity was exposed, and then calmed down.
On the way back, the man parked the car at the entrance of the residential area.
Some answers were obtained very smoothly, such as the photo, such as the mud figurine.
Some answers were meaningless even if asked, such as the other party's identity, such as the man's purpose in looking for those two statues.
There were also two questions that truly exceeded Zhang Shutong's expectations.
First, that figure that fell on the rooftop back then was not this man.
Second, he still remembered that group photo discovered in the basement on the Weaver Girl line. He inquired indirectly, yet the other party wasn't aware of it.
That was all there was to it.
Not long after, Zhang Shutong got off the car. As the sedan started up, he immediately told Gu Qiumian about the driver having an issue. Although the other party hadn't made an adverse move after acting as a driver for so long and should be harmless, Zhang Shutong didn't dare let his guard down.
However, he still didn't tell Gu Qiumian about the mud figurine, only telling her that the driver was the man looking for the fox.
Gu Qiumian called her father without hesitation. Since he was a driver for the Gu family, there should be a file left when he joined. But before long, Zhang Shutong received a call from Gu Qiumian. Calculating the time, the car that should have arrived at the villa long ago had been delaying its return.
Zhang Shutong instantly thought of something. He immediately mounted his bicycle and pedaled in the direction of the old house. Arriving at that basement in the night wind, the wall originally covered with photos was completely empty.
They were a step too late after all.
Zhang Shutong couldn't help thinking that perhaps whether he exposed the other party's identity or not, the man had already prepared to leave. Previously, he hadn't taken back these photos because he was quietly observing the few of them, intentionally hiding his existence.
Yet not long ago, he stuck up that notice of "Giving Up," suddenly surfacing above the water. Zhang Shutong was an old hand at fishing; the moment a big fish actively surfaced above the water was also the moment it vanished into the boundless lake from then on.
The villa's bodyguards went out to search, going all the way until late at night, finally finding that parked sedan on the street, but there was only a key on the driver's seat; the person driving was nowhere to be found.
There was no surveillance at the parking spot. The man had once again vanished without a sound.
And the identity he left back then was fake too; the whole person seemed to have evaporated from this world.
"What did Uncle say?" Zhang Shutong asked.
"Dad said he asked the people at the public security side to investigate," Gu Qiumian thought for a bit. "His attitude over there is actually pretty complicated. According to him, that guy was quite capable and had been by his side for a long time. Although he hid a few things, he ultimately never did anything adverse to our family over all these years, so Dad's side doesn't have a particularly big obsession."
Zhang Shutong wasn't surprised by this result.
...
During morning reading, he told his best friends the result of this matter again, and everyone felt quite emotional.
"Looking at it this way, he was pretty upright," Du Kang said suddenly. "If you hadn't caught him in the end, Shutong, and he hadn't left that paper, leaving quietly just like that, who knows how long we'd be paranoid."
Zhang Shutong thought for a bit. A person who remained hidden underground the whole time couldn't be associated with "upright" no matter what, but while this sounded a bit strange at first, thinking carefully, it wasn't wrong either.
That basement had no value to explore further anymore. For certain things, the fewer people who knew, the better. Perhaps the man taking the photos away before leaving meant just this. Taking advantage of the noon dismissal, they went to the commercial street to buy a new lock, replacing the decayed wooden door of the old house, temporarily sealing up this tunnel.
The few of them stood outside the door, silent for a moment.
"We can finally have a good Christmas," Ruoping stretched a long laziness. "I've been cooped up to death these past few days."
"Let's go." Qingyi turned around first.
Du Kang patted Zhang Shutong's shoulder as well.
When returning to school again, Zhang Shutong went up to the rooftop alone.
On the rooftop at noon, that cold, detached figure with a high ponytail could always be seen.
Lu Qinglian sat at the edge of the rooftop. As on countless middays in the past, she raised her face to look at the clear winter sky, eating her lunch quietly.
Zhang Shutong sat down not far from her.
"What were that man's exact words?"
"'The mud figurine is the incarnation of successive temple priestesses after their death.'"
Zhang Shutong repeated it once.
"But now two unrelated people have been dragged into this."
"Mm."
He looked at the photo in his hand, which represented a past event buried in dust.
Zhang Shutong dialed Song Nanshan's phone number.