Chapter Six

1

Since June 15, I have been keeping a watch on any movement of the killer on the forum.

The last post of the killer on “No.3 Victim, Ren Jinran” is tagged right behind the long post of Hard Candy entitled #Actually…I do care# — the 2604th result on Page 205.

Since it was sent at 9:26am on June 14, Hard Candy’s #Actually…I do care# also surfaced to the top page of the forum. So, these days more people get to read and join in the discussion on the case of Jinran by posting their comments and sharing it with their friends. The post originally meant for people to know about Su Ya, now becomes a special edition for Jinran.

Strange as it may sound, but in the eyes of most people in this world, a person can be totally a different version whom he or she actually is not. People only see what they want to see, leaving the subject in the extremity of an impotent despair.

Clueless about a lot of things of Who she truly was, the web version of Ren Jinran assumed her to be a replica of Su Ya, a victim of love who committed suicide because she couldn’t get over her old love. Content of the story consists of 15 percent hearsay with 85 percent taking for granted — a mistake which I, too, have made.

More than that, some netizens even respond with a sense of outrage over the death of this innocent woman, who doesn’t actually exist. A new round of “online witch hunt” starts on the night of June 15.

At 11:17am on June 17, Meng Yu’s identity is exposed on the forum, together with a mugshot on his work badge — a scanned copy, when he worked with the School of Life Science of Fudan University. At 4:48pm on June 18, Meng Yu’s current position is uncovered.

Every day, in the small hours before the day breaks, I will get up and sit in front of the computer screen. Feeling like a God in charge of everything on the earth, I watch people log on and off the forum, who are either awake till then or yet about to go to bed, waiting for the killer to reappear with due diligence. I can’t feel any better once I immerse myself in the virtual world. Only for that short period of time do I forget I am but an impotent bug.

For me, this surveillance task is a small piece of cake. Because I am used to waking up in the middle of the night, once, twice or three times, with short or long intervals between the sleeps. I don’t know if other “leftover” women or them-to-bes are like this:

A hiccup in your dream, you realize you’ve just fallen asleep. How come? As your heart gives a throb, your eyes sweep the room, searching for open arms and warm lights. But there is none. In still darkness, you slowly identify the furniture and the windowsill of the room. You listen tentatively, to make sure all is safe and solid.

You turn over to make sure that you are still sleeping in the middle of the bed, that your arms and legs comfortably spread out, and that your quilt edges are nicely tucked and straightened. Now that you are widely awake, you either lie in bed with your eyes wide open, or you get up to surf the web, just to wait for sleep to come again.

Thus, you fall asleep, wake up from the dream, and, after a short stint, you fall asleep again, dream the same dream that wakes you up again… until you see the daybreak. At the time if you close your eye, I tell you, you will soon be put into such a deep sleep that you won’t wake up again until in the afternoon.

Such teetering between the states of sleepiness and awareness made me feel as if I were playing two roles at the same time. In the dark night, the one awake was looking after the one asleep. For those who sleep with their partner, their quality of sleep ought to be different, eh?

Seven days have passed and I am still waiting. I have ferreted about all over the forum for clues, but found no other post sent under the ID name of “Su Ya,” which left me with a sense of despair and hopelessness.

Bill seems to have changed his habits these days for me. He is no longer invisible whenever I log onto MSN at 11pm, 1am, 3am, or even 4am, he was the only one available there on the list with the green light on.

“Hey, Old Ostrich, don’t you ever sleep?” I ask him.

“Old people get less sleep,” he replies.

Sometimes he jokes: “U keep a watch on the killer, I keep a watch on U.”

Other times he is very sympathetic: “I’ve never seen you so much frantically obsessed. Better take care.”

Most times I have to send over a number of screen shakes before he can send me a word or two. I suspect that he must have fallen asleep with his computer on. Does he stay up on the Internet all night just to keep me company?

I feel my mouth parched and my tongue scorched. I even had a dream in which all the mysteries were solved. I stood right in front of the killer, so proudly presenting him my findings and reasoning, while he smirked and said: “Ah, finally you know!” His face I saw in my dream was nothing but a general contact photo at the forum.

Even there is no clue of a killer, the forum has never been a dead calm sea all this while. Passionate netizens have initiated several rounds of online witch hunt as public angers mounting in the past few days. They are not satisfied just to have Meng Yu exposed. At 10:16am on June 19, they tracked down Meng Yuzhen.

Meng Yuzhen, female, divorced, a 67-year-old retiree of the Railway Hospital, is former deputy chief of the EENT (eye-ear-nose-throat) Department. At 11:38pm on June 19, her photo was posted on the forum.

In the photo, Yuzhen looks amazingly young for her age, or at least her posture looks so. She wears a pink mesh sunhat slightly tilted to one side, which allows the broad brim of the hat to cast a nice wavy pattern over her left cheek.

Her body is tiny like that of a teenage girl. Round face and big eyes, she smiles with her eyes wide open. If it were not for the wrinkles round the chin and neck, she would pass for a younger woman than He Ying who is standing right beside her.

In comparison, He Ying, who stands on her right, looks relatively huge and puffy. She has bob haircut tucked behind her ears. The light shines on her neat forehead and chubby cheeks. Without a hat upon her head, her face looks twice the size that of Yuzhen. Affectionately she puts her right hand round the shoulders of a little boy, who stands between the two women. Elf-like, he stares at the camera, leaning to one side with half of his head hidden in the arms of He Ying.

Against the backdrop of a serene water town — popular sightseeing spot in the suburbs of Shanghai such as Zhouzhuang or Wuzhen — the three of them looked relaxing and enjoyable as if they couldn’t be any happier then. Obviously, they were on a family excursion over the weekends. The photographer of the picture can’t be anyone else but Meng Yu only.

2

9:05am on June 21, Monday. He Ying is late for work, which has never ever happened before! In a flurry, she walks into Room 1906. Nodding me a casual hello, she throws her hand bag on her desk while making one loop around the office. I don’t know what she wants to do. But it seems as if she, too, didn’t know what she meant to do. She sits down absent-mindedly, hands on the chin and then on the forehead.

A moment later, rubbing her hand across her forehead, she says as if to herself: “That picture’s always been in my camera. How come it was posted online?”

“Don’t worry. Why should it matter if others see your picture on the forum? In whatever the way they are making it up, you can’t be the bad guy,” I comfort her.

“But it isn’t about me being seen in the picture…” she pauses, pondering on whether to tell me her secret or not.

“I’m just afraid,” she says, finally yielding to my concerning eyes, “What if she happens to see the post. As she knew I had the picture, she must think it was me who posted it online?”

With these words, she ducks her head to send someone a message. After a while, her phone rings. She picks up her phone and walks out of room. I hear her walking hurriedly down the corridor, along with another office door clicked-shut lightly.

The tea I made still has its leaves floating on the hot water. My boss just left without assigning today’s work. It’s drizzling outside. The light rain continuously taps the red copper window sill, creating a shimmering shades against the window pane. There is a wet smell of sandalwood roaming throughout the old office building.

I make a deep breath, feeling relaxed and rejoicing for the moment.

To be honest, l truly love this old office building, which was also the main reason why I chose to accept the job offer here. The roof is high and the doors and windows are wide open. Only sitting in the office as spacious as these, would I not feel panic and breathless.

It was in 2005 that I sensed my feeling of claustrophobia. At that time, I was working with another law firm. Sitting at its enclosed work space, I would feel as if a huge stone were sitting on my heart — I began to have cold hands, cold feet, and a cold sweating all over the body.

Located in a Grade-A office building in Lujiazui of Pudong New Area, the law firm, renting nearly half of the entire floor, dealt with loads of cases and clients every day. Several partners showed their appreciation for the work I did and there were chances of a promotion. It was really a shame that I had no choice but to quit.

That day I walked into the elevator, only to find I was trapped inside the cage. The two doors slowly shut before I remembered to press the open button. As the light went out, cold iron walls started approaching me from four sides. My heart started beating fast and it was hard to breathe, too. All of a sudden, I lost my consciousness. I didn’t even remember how I ended up in the hospital.

Later, after I was discharged, I became afraid to take the elevator. I had no choice but to climb the stairs. The law firm was on the 25th floor, making it a great but painful exercise to go to and off work every day. A few weeks later, I gave up.

The law department of the Paro Pharmaceuticals is on the 19th floor of a lovely old building, which has an antique sightseeing elevator. With all its four sides open, it is equipped with decorative red copper railings coiled into a meandering pattern. Some experts say it a kind of baroque style. For me, they like some creeping beautiful vines, which is a great source of comfort and support.

When the sun is out, the light comes in through the “vines,” making it a wonderful journey of discovery while going up and down the elevator: on one side, there is a changing view of buildings and trees along Hengshan Road ; on the other, there is a variety of front lounge reception desks along the floors of the building.

I dared to take the old elevator for my first interview here. What a great experience from the moment I stepped in! It must be custom-tailored to suit the claustrophobics. I was absolutely determined, by then, to accept whatever job position they could offer me and become a staff member of this building.

Except for the sightseeing elevator, the main building has three other elevators. Two are standard passenger elevators, whose carriages have enclosed steel walls on the four sides. They perch on either side of the sightseeing elevator in the same plane. The third one is a cargo elevator, which is built to run on the back side of the building.

The sightseeing elevator is famed to be the very slowest of them all, and not just a bit slower. That’s why almost no staff member would like to take the sightseeing elevator. They prefer to press either the left or the right button for the passenger elevator which may save them a lot of time of going up and down.

Other than me, there is He Ying who would like to push the middle button for a enjoyable slow ride. She said she felt the same just as I did about those railing patterns. She liked it most when those beautiful patches of sunlight smoothly fell upon her as she stood in the elevator, feeling as if she was running into a shower of flowers.

At 9:12am, on the morning of June 22. He Ying receives a call as soon as she gets into the office. Hanging up the phone, she struggles mightily to maintain what is left of her composure. Picking up a bit stack of all the 7-project contract files of the Ophthalmology Medicine Department, she heads for Lu Tianlan’s office.

At 1:28pm, as I go to dump my empty lunch box in the dumpster at the back of a door leading to the fire exit, I see a strange lady in the corridor. She is wearing a half sleeve deep-purple red dress. Ducked in her shoulder length hair with spiral curls, she looks Cute and little. A black enamel handbag in one hand and a pink umbrella nicely folded up in a transparent plastic holder in the other, she is talking with the receptionist seriously, trying to make herself understood with some gestures.

When she turns around to my direction, I am stunned to see a face of an old woman. Why does she look so familiar to me? I must have seen the face before, but I just can't remember where.

The receptionist takes her across the front lounge and shows her the way to Room 1912, the conference room.

3

The 19th floor is the top floor of the building where there are the President’s Office, the Vice-President’s Office, the Law Affairs Department, the Accounting Department and the Human Resources Department, plus a public conference room.

The building’s layout is a symmetrical hexagon. The sightseeing elevator and two other passenger elevators stand in one line facing south, so anyone taking the sightseeing elevator can either have the street view from the south side of the building or the front lounge settings of the reception on each floor.

In a closed honeycomb structure, the offices extend successively westwards on the southwest-northwest line and eastwards on the southeast-northeast line, meeting each other at the back of the building facing north.

The north area on the opposite side of the front lounge offers a relatively quiet environment for three suites — Room 1911 with a balcony is the President’s Office; Room 1913, also with a balcony, is Lu Tianlan’s Vice-President’s Office; and Room 1912 jammed in-between without a balcony serves as the boardroom.

As the boss rarely comes in, the office is most often closed. All three suites has two exit doors, with the front door opening to the corridor connecting to the front lounge and all other offices, and the back door toward the far north end where there was a cargo elevator and two emergency passages.

The waiting area in front of the cargo elevator has now been converted into a smoking area. People who preferred to get a puff during the board meeting can just open the back door and sneak out for a spiritual retreat.

Besides the top floor, the Paro Pharmaceuticals also takes four other floors in the building: the 7th floor is for the Medicine Department of Cell Transplantation and Central Nerve System; the 6th floor for the Ophthalmology Department; the 5th floor for the Cardiovascular Department; and the 4th floor, where there is a public meeting room and a training center.

Taking everyone’s account into consideration, what happened on the afternoon of June 22 should have been like this:

At 1:28pm, Tianlan having finished reviewing the draft of contracts from the Ophthalmology Department called for the secretary to send the files back to Han Feng, manager of the Ophthalmology Department immediately. Because Han Feng was scheduled to meet the clients for a final negotiation concerning the details on the contracts at 4pm. As soon as the secretary was gone, the telephone rang. It was the receptionist. She said there was a woman called Meng Yuzhen at the door, who said she had made an appointment at 1:30pm with Lu Tianlan in the morning.

At 1:32pm, Tianan walked into the boardroom through the door opening to the corridor to meet Meng Yuzhen. Patiently, she listened to what Yuzhen had to say. The major complaint of her was He Ying, her daughter-in-law who she said had posted some pictures of her on the website, which smeared her name and damaged her reputation. She said she came with the hope that the company leader would be aware of the grave consequence if they didn't educate their employees properly.

Yuzhen’s complaints were long and tedious. With detailed accounts on the friction in the family, she didn’t finish until 1:50pm. At that moment, the extension line in the boardroom rang. It was diverted by the secretary from the Ophthalmology Department on the 6th floor. Han Feng sounded very anxious in the phone, because the pack he received only contained six documents. The most important document on supplementary items was missing. Tianlan replied: “I’m in a meeting. Call He Ying and ask her to come down to your office and check which one is the missing.”

Yuzhen heard them talking over the phone. She knew there must be something urgent happening but she showed the least intension to leave. Tianlan had no choice but to say to her: “Please sit here for a while. I shall go next door to see if the missing document is left on my desk.”

With these words, she exited the boardroom through the back door, walked past the smoking area and returned to her own office. It was 1:54pm.

According to her personality, Yuzhen would have waited for her in the boardroom. She wouldn’t leave until she got a definite reply. She might be sitting there for the entire afternoon and still not wanting to leave even when everybody was off work at 5:30pm. However, her mobile rang. It was from her son Meng Yu, who begged her to come home immediately. Otherwise, he said, he would resign.

Yuzhen got up in a huff and tramped out of the boardroom. She opened the door through which she was led in and stepped out onto the corridor. She looked around but didn’t see anyone, nor did she know in which closed door Tianlan would be in. Walking along the corridor, Yuzhen finally came to the elevator in front of the receptionist’s desk. Seeing her going away, the receptionist said she took a look at the time in the lower right corner of the computer screen: it was 1:59pm.

The down button of the sightseeing elevator was on and He Ying stood there waiting for it to come up. She was about to go down to the Ophthalmology Department on the 6th floor. Han Feng called her five minutes ago, asking her to come downstairs and check which document was missing. Hurriedly downloading all the files to a USB drive, He Ying walked out of the office and came to the elevator along the corridor. She pressed the down button of the sightseeing elevator as she would often do. Just then her face froze, as out of the corner of her eyes she saw Meng Yuzhen coming toward her.

She had no choice but to greet her: “Ma--.”

Yuzhen made no reply. They both looked up to the display panel on top of the elevator door frame. 9, 10, 11… Keeping their eyes fix on the changing figures, neither of them talked. Thinking it would be even more embarrassing later in the elevator, He Ying, with a woman’s quick invention, said: “Ma, they’re waiting for me. This elevator is too slow. I will take the stairs.”

With these words, she dashed across the front lounge to the emergency passage at the back of the building.

Yuzhen’s mobile rang again. It was from Meng Yu. He asked if she had come downstairs. At 2:01pm, as the door to the sightseeing elevator slowly opened at the 19th floor, Yuzhen was still talking on the phone. The mother and son might be arguing again over the phone about the daughter-in-law and she just wouldn’t let it go.

With one hand on the phone, the handbag and folding umbrella in the other, she stepped into the cab. She didn’t notice the rain had started, tapping the copper rails from the outside. Neither did she notice the lights from the inside of the building had cast a continuous wavy shadows on her body as she went down.

She must have pressed the button for the first floor at first, but somehow she changed her idea midway and pressed the 6th floor button. Perhaps she was still angry at being left high and dry in the boardroom just now, or she was provoked by her son on the phone again and suddenly decided to go to the 6th floor to find He Ying to clear out all that crap. Perhaps, she had overheard that Tianlan was sending He Ying to the 6th floor.

At least, this was the only motivation we assumed why she chose to get out on the 6th floor.

Slowly the front lounge of the Ophthalmology Department arose in sight. Beautiful railings of the elevator cab fell to merge with the exterior door rails, and finally became one complete picture as the cab came to a full stop. The indicator light blinked out and the doors slid open automatically, first the cab door then the exterior door.

“You shut up!” Yuzhen was heard screaming into the phone as she tried to squeeze out of the elevator before the doors were fully open.

At this very moment, the elevator, according to the receptionist on the 6th floor, gave off a grunting noise like a burp after eating a big meal. As if getting a wild RUN command, this ancient Baroque robot immediately shut tight both the cab door and the exterior door. Different from its usual drawling style, it was hurled upward like a spinning top being carried into a leap under a torque.

The elevator cab lurched up, came to a stand still on the 8th floor under the influence of inertia, and then went into a free fall due to its own gravity.

All the elevator indicator lights were out then. Nobody knew which floor it was going to stop at, 7,6…2 and 1. Thirty seconds later, everybody in the building felt the quake as the elevator cab hit bottom. Instead of stopping at the first floor, it dropped into the deserted basement, where it should be stored every night after 11pm when the elevator maintenance worker shuts down the power in the elevator control room on the top floor of the building. But it was then only 2:07pm in the afternoon.

Yuzhen’s mobile was still left outside the elevator door of the 6th floor. On as it had been, nobody dared to pick it up.

At 2:04pm, Yuzhen was seen talking angrily on the phone as she tried to get pass the half-opened elevator door. All of a sudden, the exterior door was shut, barring her from getting onto the platform, while the fancy railings of the cab were also shut to nip her left leg from the inside. With her body largely clamped outside the cab between the two doors, the elevator jerked upward.

Her head tilting to the side, the receptionist on the 8th floor was talking with a handsome male employee, who bent over to the left side of her desk, beaming with joy and talking feverishly about the doomsday prophecy.

As the elevator grunted, both of them turned their head to the elevator. They saw a woman in a red purple dress passing in a flash, like a fish that heaved up out of the deep water. In the blink of an eye, she went down to the bottom, leaving only the empty shaft and the sliding doors swinging in an unperceived way.

The employee turned his head back to the receptionist. He tried to continue flirting with her, but only rambled on about some irrelevant sentences. Fortunately the woman wasn’t at all listening. Both of them were thinking secretly to themselves: was what they had seen just an illusion or what?

Jesus! The red dress wasn’t inside the elevator cab! It was clutching at the railings and going up and down with the frantic elevator. A woman was virtually jammed in between the cab railings and the exterior door. How did she get into that trap!

Three clients, two men and one woman, at the 6th floor lounge, were also waiting for the elevator to go downstairs. A young employee stood quietly by their side to see them off. Just a few seconds ago, they were dumbfounded to see the sightseeing elevator clamp the old lady between the doors and carry her upward. In the blink of a second, the old woman was back to the 6th floor. They saw her cling on to the elevator railing outside the elevator cab between the closed doors. Without a stop, she was falling fast together with the elevator cab straight down to the ground. The woman client screamed aloud as she finally came out of shock. When the passenger elevator stopped to open on the 6th floor, she sprung backward and refused to get in for fear of life.

That day afternoon, people who happened to be passing the front lounge of the 5th, 4th and 3rd floors all saw Meng Yuzhen falling successively. Her twisted body, sandwiched between the elevator doors, went past one floor after another without stopping and finally submerges underneath the ground floor lobby, like falling straight into the hell.

A few minutes before the accident, Tianlan called Han Feng, asking if He Ying had arrived. She then heard a woman’s screaming over the phone. The moment when He Ying reached the 6th floor through the emergency passage, Yuzhen must have been falling down from the 3rd floor to the 2nd floor.

No sooner had Yuzhen slammed down into the darkness of the basement, Meng Yu ran into the ground lobby of the Huanghang Mansion. As he was busy shaking out the rain from his shoulders, He Ying, Han Feng, and Tianlan arrived at the scene one after another. More and more people, who either wanted to help or look for sensations, hastened to come downstairs to gather at the entrance to the sightseeing elevator on the ground floor lobby.

They shouted down to the elevator shaft, but there came no response from the woman who had just fallen into it. Someone rushed to find the elevator maintenance worker, others went to find the key to the basement door.

Ten minutes later, the maintenance man who was taking a nap under the shade in the backyard, was dragged out of his sling chair. In a panic, he ran toward the top floor control room to turn on the power switch.

The instant when the old elevator cab with red copper railings was seen rising from the underground, a cold blast of wind swept through the wide lobby, giving the shudders to everyone present.

Honestly speaking, there was nothing bloody to sight. The woman in the red purple dress was still clutching to the railings of the elevator. When the two doors opened one after the other, she plopped to the ground in a stooped posture, with her head facing the elevator doors and her feet still inside the elevator cab.

Meng Yu rushed toward her, holding her in his arms and turns her around, only to see her lips dark purple, her eyes wide open, her fingers spread and curled and her whole body stiff hard.

Soon the police and the ambulance arrive. The flashing lights on top of the vehicles spin fervently to give off a fireworks sensation under a dim, rainy sky. Officers in uniform walked in and out of the Huahang Mansion through the revolving doors — the only ones that are indifferent and speechless under such a state of turmoil.

Dark clouds spread like split ink. From each end of the plane tree leaves, the rain continues dripping off. You can hear the water gurgling as it runs down the drain. Unnoticeably, the plum rain season in Shanghai has arrived.

I walk downstairs through the emergency exit from the 19th floor to the ground floor. As I step into the lobby, I see the police have cordoned off the area right in front of the sightseeing elevator to collect evidence. An agitated crowd is still surrounding the scene, whispering to each other’s ears. The maintenance man, squatting on the ground, is sweating like crazy as he murmurs: “Geez, how could the switch be pressed down? How could it be? I don’t know, I don’t know lah…”

At 3:52 am, I am back in the office and customarily key in “Su Ya” on the forum and click the search engine to search for new results. Thirty seconds later, I am appalled to see one more post by the name of “Su Ya” despite the previous three. The latest one is sent on the afternoon of June 22, at 3:41 pm.

～～

No.4 Meng Yuzhen

W, do you not yet understand what I am thinking about?

～～

I pick up the phone and call Xiaoshan immediately.

“On the forum…the killer’s just sent a new post. Meng Yuzhen is dead, right in our office building.” I said incoherently.

“Ok, I see,” Wang replied adroitly.

Twenty-six minutes later, he calls me back: “The preliminary result from the investigation is out. Someone must have sneaked into the switch control room on the top floor when the maintenance man was taking his nap in the yard. He deliberately switched off the power source, causing the elevator to descend.

“This is the internal information…all confidential, please don’t let it out,” he added before hanging up the phone.

4

As is expected, the killer is really approaching. I can feel him somewhere right in front of me, just some 11 minutes’ walk afar.

Or, maybe even closer.

At 00:10am on June 22, Bill sends me a buzz, which he rarely does.

“I have known where the killer is.” He drops me a line.

One second ago I am sleepy with my eyes half-closed. This second, I almost jump up from the front of the computer.

“Where? Speak up!”

Neither fast nor slow in the way he usually acts, Bill takes his time typing down the reply: “The killer made a mistake today as he was posting the message on the forum this afternoon. He didn’t use the foreign proxy serve to log in, so I have managed to get his IP address.”

Complete, as if he had told me the whole story from the very beginning.

“Where? Tell me.” I demand.

But there are no more replies from him in the dialog box. Damn it! What is he hesitating for? I keep buzzing him…

After a long while, the dialog box gets flashed again. I click it open and see there is only one line which says: “The killer’s IP address is the same as yours.”

What a joke?!

All I can hear is the wind whirring behind my back, the window lattice banging against the concrete walls. Darkness starts to permeate the house, which makes the hairs on my back stand up, and I dare not look back. How could the killer get into my place, sitting on my bed and sending messages from my computer as if he were me?

“Queer bird! Damn bird! I curse you! Do you want to scare me to death?” I type back.

“I am very sorry to tell you so,” he replies calmly.

What? Did he really think that I was the murderer?

“Sometimes, people don’t know what they have been doing.

It’s like a person could have two to three or more distinctive personalities living in his body at the same time. Each alternatively controls a person’s behavior.

They don’t know what the other is thinking about; neither do they remember what the other was once doing of the same body.

Medically speaking, it is a mental disorder called DID for Dissociative Identity Disorder, commonly known as a Split Personality.”

Word by word, Bill types down on the screen.

*

Hengshan Road is a street in the former French Concession of Shanghai. The boulevard was for much of the 20th century the center of Shanghai's premier residential area. Since the 1990s, many of the mansions along the road have been converted into bars, night clubs, and restaurants, and is one of Shanghai's more vibrant nightlife districts and popular particularly among expatriates.

TO BE CONTINUED…

(Translated from the Chinese by Xu Qin)