Every time we arrive at a new destination, my favorite part is unloading the luggage from the roof. Xu Tuo holds the boxes below and tells me what interesting places he has just found in the city.
Small cities might only have one business district, and a taxi mile from east to west costs only 30 yuan. The biggest expense is accommodation. We contact the hosts directly through the homestay app, bypassing the platform, avoiding online records and ID checks, and paying in cash. The hosts also like this, as they don't have to pay a commission.
After putting down my things, I started to study how to change the style. After I became proficient in playing with braces, I played with these new toys almost every day.
"Don't make yourself too conspicuous. Your buck teeth look too fake." Xu Tuo dug it out of my mouth. "People of this age don't buckle that badly anymore."
"Why?"
"Because it's serious to this extent, people usually get braces."
Once you get tired of playing, everything will be peaceful. He said that in the end, you will basically change three faces.
I asked, "Then why have you always used your real face since you lived in my house for so many years?"
"There are so many faces that the real face becomes just one of the masks."
"When I'm in a good mood, maybe I'll try to figure out how to invent a new face..."
"No," he said with a wry smile. "Most people can only remember three faces in their lifetime. Some people chase stars, right? They'll go to previews and concerts... but the enthusiasm wears off quickly. Maybe after a month or three, they'll be chasing someone new. True love that can sustain a lifetime is probably only for one or two stars. There's a limit to the amount of human emotion."
After completely escaping the social rules of the ordinary world, my perspective on humanity changed. I never thought humans were cute before, but now, I find those white-collar workers, those children, and those elderly people chatting and dancing in the park all adorable, harmless, and peaceful. You know the hardships they face in life: promotions, loans, housework, failing game dungeons, illness, waiting for organ transplants, and never having enough money.
They all live well, and I also hope that everyone in this world can live well and live an ordinary life. I even began to understand Xia Mo. He wanted to completely erase that world and let ordinary people live in clear water.
As long as no one liberates their animal nature.
We would occasionally go hunting, and during that time, we were not allowed to smoke or do anything extraneous. He would do the work, and I would create a good environment for him—like pretending to be drunk at the entrance of an alley. No one wanted to walk into an alley with a drunk vomiting at the corner.
This was also one of his sources of income. Xu Tuo said it would take at least five years of wandering around. Furthermore, the manhunt, which seemed relaxed now, was actually intensifying. His crimes were so egregious that he wouldn't be removed from the wanted list for at least twenty years.
"Things will escalate, and eventually it'll become a nationwide manhunt." At night, we lay together on the bed in the guesthouse, his fingers drawing a grid in the air. "It gets denser and denser, and the space left for us ranges from a guesthouse, to the subway steps, to a homeless gathering place... until finally, we can only spend the night in a phone booth."
"But if there are two of us, we won't be able to squeeze into the phone booth, right?"
"Maybe there won't be two of us left by then, huh?"
After a long journey, we arrived in Qingdao. However, we didn't stay long in the city because the sports games were underway, and the city was tightening its inspections of outsiders. I had never experienced the pressure of such a situation before. Walking through the station or on the subway, police or auxiliary police could come at any moment to verify your identity. I handed over my ID, even though it was fake. The police looked at me for a long time, so long that I almost turned and ran. Xu Tuo stayed behind to steady me. He taught me that if I panicked, I should just glance at my phone screen and pretend to check the time.
Furthermore, we are checked very frequently. I used to take the subway so many times and never got checked, but now the probability of getting checked is about 70 percent.
Experienced police officers have a certain "sense of smell." They will instinctively feel that there is something wrong with this man, just like Uncle Zhou dislikes Xu Tuo. He can't explain why he doesn't like him, but just by looking at him, he will feel that Xu Tuo makes him uncomfortable.
All of Xu Tuo's previous fake identities were anonymously provided to the police. That wasn't all of them; he still had three or four that could be used. That was a hidden gem even Xia Mo didn't know about. We relied on these identities, rotating through them, to get to Qingdao.
Height can be changed by using heels, and body shape can be changed by wrapping cloth around the body, but all disguises will leave hidden dangers.
Xu Tuo's plan was to rest in Qingdao and then continue northward into the forested areas of Northeast China. From there, they would move to the border. The difficulty was the season. With winter approaching in the north, without adequate preparation, we wouldn't be able to cross the Mohe border in the freezing cold and snowy conditions.
Because we'd already made a double-cross for Ajie, the search had already stretched north. When Xu Tuo used a map to explain the deployment of the search network, it was like explaining a pile of dry cotton caught on fire. Highway entrances and exits, rural road entrances and exits, mountain patrols, border guards, train stations... As long as there were no leads, the search network would expand outward.
"I've left 'stakes' in the east, west, and south directions," he said. "If something happens, I can escape in the opposite direction, and the 'stakes' in the other direction will be activated, giving the police a false clue."
Now that L-Class's communication had collapsed, his connection with Zhuan was also severed. Even worse, with the arrests of some of the individuals, the escape routes that L-Class members had previously reserved for themselves, their methods of doing things, their thinking patterns... would all be exposed.
"You will also exist in those oral accounts."
"Me? Will they say that Class L caused a riot because of me?"
"It depends on what they say." Xu Tuo smiled slightly, leaning his head on the steering wheel to look at me. "They usually exaggerate. So, in their narrative, you might be the fuse of everything, the protagonist in a drama of fiery tricks on the princes."
We chatted and laughed as the car entered the highway, but before the toll booth, there was another inspection checkpoint.
The chatter stopped. We all watched in silence as it approached, following the other cars and lining up for inspection.
Actually, I had a premonition at that time.
We had always passed highway inspections naturally before, but this time, as if realizing something, neither of us spoke.
It's a nice day today. That's all I remember.
The clouds in the north are different from those in the south. They are thick, complex and layered. I looked at the clouds for a long time before the police asked Xu Tuo to stop the car and turn off the engine.
We handed over our IDs, but the young officer didn't let us go after examining them. He stared at us for a long time, then asked us to leave the car and wait in another area. He soon brought over an older officer. The middle-aged man, frowning, repeatedly compared our IDs with the information displayed on the device.
"What are you doing in the North?"
"Road trip."
"Where is the departure point?"
…
Xu Tuo had a set of fixed and boring answers to deal with such interrogations.
"Is this the owner of this car?" He showed Xu Tuo a name. Xu Tuo shook his head and said that he bought the car from an agent.
I could tell something was amiss from the police officer's demeanor. The problem wasn't with the previous owner of the car, it was with us. The unusual secondhand car transactions, our detours through different cities under false identities and our journey north, the data records of previous inspections...
"Check the fingerprints." He said to Xu Tuo, "Both of them."
Xu Tuo's fingerprints had been damaged by his grinding, so they couldn't be pressed. When I pressed my fingerprints, my hands were shaking uncontrollably.
A few minutes later, we were allowed to pass. At first, no one said a word. Then I noticed Xu Tuo was driving very fast, approaching 130 km/h on the highway several times.
"They let us go... Does that mean..."
"We're running out of time," he said. "We'll abandon the car by the woods at the next country road entrance, buy the necessary supplies as quickly as possible, and then take a black car to the forest area."
——My fingerprint is on the identity of "Dai Xueming".
This person had no criminal record, but he was a missing person. Criminals and missing persons used separate databases, but they could be interconnected. With current testing equipment and communication methods, within three hours at most, Uncle Zhou back home would receive news from the north—Dai Xueming was still alive, with the other man whose fingerprints had been destroyed.
The car was abandoned on the side of a bumpy country road. Xu Tuo's attitude towards me also changed suddenly. He always walked a little behind me, holding my shoulders tightly, and used an imperative tone in front of others.
It was precisely because I knew what he was planning that I began to feel uneasy. If these people were questioned, their testimony would make me look like a hostage held by Xu Tuo.
He contacted a black car that dared to take us along a wild road to the forest area. The driver obviously knew that we were not coming from a legitimate way. When Xu Tuo pushed me into the car, the driver did not ask any questions.
Anyone who dared to board one of these illegal taxis was most likely a fugitive. The driver would go to another location to hand us over to the next driver, ensuring that the passenger wouldn't kill us to silence us. We changed cars several times, and on the ninth day, I saw clouds like falling mountains, rolling over the vast river in the distance.
"Where is this?" I couldn't help but ask.
The driver replied to us for the first time: "Heilongjiang."
It took me a while to realize this. Growing up in the south, Heilongjiang was the name of a region, not a real river.
I never thought that one day I would see its tributaries along the way.
"Shut up." Xu Tuo said, "I warned you..."
"——Get off." The driver stopped the car in the middle of a wild road. "There will be a small town ahead. Go there to find the next person."
Beneath the white snow, we could see the road signs along the way, preventing us from getting lost in the blizzard. We were heading towards the river, but it was quiet; I could only hear the occasional crackle of ice. I'd imagined the Heilongjiang River to be one of those mighty rivers where, as soon as you approach, you'd hear the deafening crash of waves. But it was too quiet, its gray-gold surface filtered through the falling snow into a gentle pearlescent sheen.
For the first time in my life, I felt homesick. It was because I saw the luster of the river.
It reminds me of many things about my mother: the shine of her hair, the gloss of her nails, the beige skirt she loved, the pair of white patent leather shoes she loved...
I couldn't help but stop and look at it for a long time.
Xu Tuo didn't rush me. He brushed off the snow on a stone and pulled me to sit down.
"This is just a tributary," he said, his gentle tone returning when no one else was around. "The Songhua River, the Yalu River, the Ussuri River... there are many other famous tributaries."
"What about Mohe?"
"Mohe is in the far north, but it's too far away."
"Aren't we going to Mohe?"
He was silent for a moment, then smiled at me and said, "It's too far."
Snow fell silently, staining his eyelashes and eyebrows white. Xu Tuo patted the snow off his warm clothes and asked, "Xueming, did you miss home just now?"
I was stunned.
"How do you know?"
"Because I was homesick just now. It was like a telepathy." He shrugged. "It's a pity that I have no home to go back to."
"So what are you thinking about?"
"I thought about you."
He was silent. I stood up and tried to continue on my way, but Xu Tuo grabbed me and held me tightly in his arms.
"I thought about you, and about your aunt who's waiting for you at home." He winked at me, and suddenly, his face somewhat returned to the way I remembered it—that day when I got home from high school. The house was bustling, and the aroma of food wafted from the air. Mom and Dad were setting the table, a feast of dishes. Dad said, "Xueming, hurry up and say hello to Xiaoxu. He's living with us from now on."
Xu Tuo was sitting at the table in my house. His age was hard to tell, he was wearing black clothes and had a lovely smile.
"I miss Uncle Dai's cooking, too. You can't imagine, I've never been in an atmosphere like this. When I was in the United States with Teacher and Ajie, the atmosphere wasn't like this. Teacher was always sad, and he couldn't even break free from his despair. Later, in the place where we stayed temporarily, no one invited me to eat with them..." He smiled, lowering his head, and slowly held my neck with both hands. "So even though it was time to leave, I thought, let's stay one more day, just one more day..."
His grip suddenly tightened, gripping me tightly. In the snowstorm, figures gathered silently from all directions. The black muzzle of the gun was pointed at Xu Tuo.
Xu Tuo held me, the blade pressed against my neck. Neither of us had disguises on our faces, and our identities were immediately confirmed.
"Xueming," he held me in front of him and asked me softly, "Do you want to die?"
"...Maybe... I really don't think it's interesting anymore." The corners of my mouth twitched, forming a smile, but to the surrounding police, it looked like a facial twitch of fear. "Shall we go?"
"real?"
"real."
Someone was calling out, but I couldn't hear clearly, my attention focused on the pearly surface of the river. Xu Tuo was humming that old song, which now sounds a bit cheesy.
Come with me, we'll set off at daybreak.
"Count to three." He covered my eyes with one hand and made me look up. The blade was pressed against the middle of my neck, where there were still lavender marks left by strangulation. "...Let's go."
The next second, a stinging pain pierced the wound, and I fell down the snowy slope—he had scratched me and then pushed me down. The sound of gunfire rang out many times, echoing in the snowy country.
Everything soon returned to calm, and the noise was absorbed by the quiet river water.
Xu Tuo's figure fell from the other side of the snow slope, dragging the bright red along with him, and rolled into the river. The white snow quickly fell on the fresh blood, some of it melting in the heat. After a few seconds, the snow and blood congealed together.
I walked out of an eyeglass store.
It will take another half an hour for the new glasses to be made, so you can go for a walk in the mall first.
The clerk who performed my eye exam was curious about my condition. "At your age, it's rare to see a sudden increase in my prescription. Have you had any head injuries recently?"
I nodded.
A previous head injury and the experience of being imprisoned in darkness had caused my eyesight to deteriorate into myopia.
Two years have passed since that incident.
I had been under investigation for a full year. The final conclusion was that I was being held hostage, and during that time, the pressure caused psychological disturbances that led to my assisting others.
A broken little finger, laceration marks, and knife wounds all suggested violence and coercion. However, I was also fired from my job because I was suspected of aiding in an escape attempt.
There was nothing to do at home, and travel outside the city was not allowed for the time being. I signed up for an online course in a foreign language, sporadically attending classes and memorizing vocabulary.
During that time, I was given a warning for fighting. While shopping at the supermarket, I encountered a few drunk young men picking a fight at the counter. I hit two of them with a bottle and stabbed another. Uncle Zhou came over that night and scolded me.
"You need to be normal," he said. "Everyone knows you've been through terrible things, but Xueming, you're back to normal life now. You need to be normal."
He also made an appointment for me to have internal counseling. My violent tendencies were so severe that even smashing a bottle over someone's head didn't seem like a big deal—if they were aggressive, I wouldn't have thought it was a big deal.
My counselor believed that I had a minor personality breakdown caused by extreme fear, and that I would react to those who showed aggression. This kind of breakdown can be recovered with life, but I still applied for psychiatric treatment.
In fact, it is a mental hospital where people can enter voluntarily and come and go freely. Such sanatoriums are gradually being accepted by people, and the conditions are actually quite good.
During the physical examination, the doctor classified me as having suicidal tendencies because of the faint marks on my neck.
However, I haven't felt suicidal in a long time.
Xu Tuo's last stab was from the center of the mark on me, stabbing upwards, making the wound look deep and scary, but because the location avoided all vital parts, even though it looked scary, it was essentially just a minor injury.
The wound healed, leaving a scar in the middle of the ligature, which looked like a knife cutting the rope.
The day he left the sanatorium was the day Uncle Zhou retired. He retired safely and held a banquet, which lasted all night.
The next day, Uncle Zhou contacted me and wanted to talk to me.
He's retired and has nothing to do. We met at the restaurant downstairs from his house and ordered two stir-fries.
"Actually, I've never liked you," he said.
I was stunned, thinking I had heard it wrong.
"When you were very young, I complained to Lao Dai about you, thinking you weren't friendly or cheerful," he said. "Neither Lao Dai nor I had much education. He wanted you to be a scholar, so he thought it was best for you to be like this, so you could concentrate on your studies."
"You didn't misjudge me."
"I'm very good at judging people. When you were in elementary school, I felt that you would cause some terrible trouble in the future. Your father was also very bad at judging people. When your family was looking for tenants, I reminded him that it would be better to hire a family of three. Such a family would not argue over who would wash the dishes, and would worry about the money for their children's tutoring classes. They were normal families. But he didn't listen and hired that person. He had his reasons. He felt that if the tenants were a family of three, it would disturb your studies." He put down his chopsticks and sighed, "--I can see that you are too easily attracted to those abnormal things."
I smiled and said nothing.
Now that he's retired, he can say a lot. During the investigation, Uncle Zhou took a huge risk and suppressed many things for me. He hesitated, but he helped me for the sake of his old brother's only son.
"From now on, I can no longer help you. Xueming, I'm old." The food was too spicy, so he lit a cigarette and I did the same. "But you don't have to think I'm an old fogey. In fact, I understand you. I've met many young people who have gone astray, and many of them didn't go astray by mistake, but rushed into it on their own. The reason is simple - chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns obviously make your mouth sore and numb, but people just love these strong flavors. Don't look at the people in the news crying, regretting their wrongdoings, and promising to change their ways..." He reached out and took the cigarette from my hand and put it out on the table, "In fact, once you've tasted that taste, it's impossible to go back."
After retirement, Uncle Zhou planned to move to another city with his children. His daughter had been admitted to a university in another city.
Before leaving, he patted me on the shoulder and said, "Take care of yourself."
After getting permission to leave the city, I traveled north for the third year. I drove to Heilongjiang by myself, wanting to see the place where he died.
However, it was more lively there than I thought. Although there was no village in front and no shop behind, there were many people staying there, touching the snow piled on the hillside.
He was afraid that he would not be able to sleep well - these people brought cigarettes, alcohol, incense burners, and wreaths, just like a group of ancestor worshippers.
I know this group of people. Xu Tuo's case sparked a huge debate back then. Some people thought he was a serial killer, while others considered him a hero and even began to fanatically admire him, leading to the emergence of imitators.
I watched them from a distance for a long time.