Phew.
Though it was late summer, under the dim yellow streetlights, the two plumes of breath exhaled from his nostrils were clearly visible.
"Do you feel it?" Li Ang asked softly.
The black umbrella behind him swayed gently, making a soft SWISH.
Yin Energy—faint yet distinct—filled the narrow, dirty alley like a misty gossamer veil, obscuring the view.
The black umbrella swayed contentedly, absorbing the ambient cold Yin Energy. Li Ang adjusted his breathing, letting the Ripple's Energy flow slowly through his body.
The warmth dispersed the chill. Li Ang shook himself, then moved through the alley. Following the trail of Yin Energy, he turned left and right until he arrived at a two-story house.
The house was an overall grayish-brown, its exterior walls covered with lush creeping ivy. Through gaps in the branches and leaves, one could see patches of crumbling cement.
This house was probably a good twelve years older than Li Ang. Its corners and foundations, riddled with cracks, made one wonder if the building might collapse at any moment.
Light shone from a room on the second floor. Standing below, one could faintly hear the young voices of children reading aloud. Li Ang paused. He looked left and right to confirm no one was around, then quickly scaled the building's wall like a black cat. Silently, he crouched on the second-floor roof, listening intently to the sounds below.
"At the foot of the mountain, there is a stone cliff with a crack in it. The Chilly Bird makes this crack its nest."
Several childish voices were reading aloud from a textbook—"Chilly Bird," from the second-grade curriculum published by the People's Education Press. The gist of the story was that winter was approaching, but the Chilly Bird procrastinated, refusing to build a nest, and eventually froze to death on a cold winter night.
The voices belonged to five boys and three girls, all very young, sitting two by two in four rows. The footsteps occasionally pacing at the front of the small room belonged to an adult male, wearing cloth shoes and weighing around 155 pounds.
Even without seeing, just from the sounds, Li Ang could roughly picture the room's interior. Was this some kind of shantytown tutoring class?
After the children finished reading the text, the man at the podium coughed violently and had them work on math exercise books.
Li Ang lay patiently on the roof, waiting for something to happen. Ten minutes later, there was a knock on the room's door. A middle-aged woman, whose voice suggested she did heavy physical labor, thanked the teacher wearily and took her child away.
As ten o'clock approached, the children from the "tutoring class" were all picked up by their parents. After the door was closed, the man at the front of the classroom coughed violently again and leisurely brewed himself a pot of tea.
Jasmine tea. Its color was fresh and delicate, its taste sweet and pleasant, believed to clear heat and detoxify. Pale white blossoms floated and spun in the brew, a sight calming in itself.
The middle-aged man, Zou Zhengze, held the lid of his enamel cup, gently rubbing it against the cup's rim before taking a sip. He then said calmly, addressing the window, "Won't you come down and have a look?"
After a moment of silence, Li Ang vaulted gracefully through the window. The red-faced Guan Gong on his Mask glared fiercely at Zou Zhengze.
"Which organization are you with?" Zou Zhengze blew gently across the surface of his tea, asking in a relaxed tone. "Special Affairs Bureau? Heterodox Academy? Or Whale Song?"
Li Ang didn't reply, instead inspecting Zou Zhengze with keen interest.
He appeared to be around forty-five years old, of average build—neither fat nor thin—with short hair. He wore cloth shoes, a wrinkled, pilled red short-sleeved T-shirt, and black trousers. The parts of his arms visible below the short sleeves bore large patches of old burn scars.
On his face, the burn scars were even more prominent. A dark red scar covered his entire left cheek, extending to below his right ear. Whenever he smiled, his slightly swollen lips stretched sideways, making one fear that the corners of his mouth might split open along the scars.
"Zeng Weiming and Wang Fangni... was it you who killed them?"
"It was me," Zou Zhengze nodded.
"Why?" Li Ang asked. "A grudge?"
"A grudge?" Zou Zhengze shook his head. "Not for hatred, but for love."
Li Ang sneered. "No sane person would consider murder an expression of love."
Zou Zhengze shook his head and coughed a few times. He stood up from his chair and tapped the table. "What do you think of this place?"
"For a tutoring class, it's not bad."
"Actually, this isn't really a tutoring class," Zou Zhengze smiled. "The people living in this area aren't wealthy. Many couples work labor-intensive jobs from dawn to dusk and simply don't have the time or means to care for their children.
"When I was young, I mended bicycles, carried loads, stoked boilers, ran a small store, worked as a barefoot doctor, and even taught for a while. So, I thought I'd put my old skills to use, help the local residents by looking after their kids, and tutor them a bit in their studies."
"A touching story," Li Ang said calmly. "You could almost be nominated for Yin City's Top Ten Inspirational Figures award."
Zou Zhengze ignored the sarcasm in Li Ang's words and sighed. "When we were kids, Wang Fangni and I were best friends. We grew up together in the village, went to school together. Unfortunately, my family was too poor to send me to high school, so I had to enter society early and struggle to get by.
"Later, I heard that Fang Ni's family had run into trouble and couldn't afford her school fees. So, I took on two jobs in the city and sent her money so she could continue high school.
"When she was in university, we lived together. I drove a taxi to help make ends meet; she attended classes during the day and came home to cook for me in the evenings. Those were our happiest times. She told me that as soon as she graduated, she would marry me."
His dark red, scarred face softened with a trace of fond nostalgia. "But the good times didn't last. During a volunteer effort to fight a large fire, I rushed into the blaze, but the very person I was trying to rescue stole my escape Mask. By the time firefighters pulled me out, I was in this horrific, ghastly state.
"Fang Ni didn't abandon me. She took meticulous care of me by my bedside, constantly describing the beautiful future we had once envisioned.
"But there it was: she was a university student with a limitless future, and I was a disfigured cripple with a Broken body. The whispers and stares from those around us made Fang Ni grow increasingly silent.
"Have you ever experienced that? The fear of abandonment, the fear of being despised, hating yourself, loathing yourself, no longer able to trust the person you love," Zou Zhengze said in a daze. "Back then, I was awful to her, truly awful. I would lash out violently, and she would remain silent. I told her to get lost, but she wouldn't. So, I tore off my bandages and, under the cover of night, fled the hospital, fled that city.
"During that time, I couldn't tell if I hated her or myself."