Wan Jie Hospice Care Company

"Do you remember what happened before?"

After putting on dry clothes, Xiang Yu, who was freezing from the winter river water, asked.

He sat on the riverbank, letting the setting sun shine in. The sun was blood red, casting its warmth onto the windows of every building in the town, making the whole town look like it had been casually pressed with countless red fingerprints, one by one.

Ji Zhuo and Li Yiheng nodded: "We still remember."

"How many times do you remember?"

"...Uh, once?" Ji Zhuo hesitated for a moment before saying, "Could it be that we've encountered it several times already?"

"You've encountered this at least twice... does that mean you only recovered the memory of the last time?" Xiang Yu muttered to himself.

"Achoo!" An Ling shivered as she wiped her nose.

"Sigh, I never thought these things were really related to the supernatural..." Ji Zhuo shook his head. "So how do we solve these kinds of cases? How do we punish the culprit in a case where there's no perpetrator?"

"Did those who died die in vain?"

He murmured, a look of confusion appearing in his eyes for the first time. The law is meant to establish rules for people, but if the murderer is no longer even human, then who will be held accountable for those rules?

Xiang Yu watched the sun slowly sink below the horizon and said softly, "...Officer, I need to tell you something. Can you trust me?"

"Section Chief Xiang, you're being too polite. After going through so much with you, how could I not believe you?" This time, Li Yiheng finally realized what was going on and quickly came over to say.

"Well... you two listen up."

Upon hearing this, the two policemen immediately put on serious faces, appearing as if they were listening attentively.

"The world is going to end."

"..."

"...?"

"What the heck?"

Ji Zhuo originally thought it would be some earth-shattering secret, but it really was.

"That's right. If the calculation is correct, our world won't reach the year 2000." Xiang Yu casually picked up a stone and threw it onto the river. The stone bounced on the surface of the river dozens of times before sinking in the middle of the river.

"No, no, no, no way." Li Yiheng froze, his Adam's apple bobbing twice. "The world is going to end?"

"Section Chief Xiang, could it be some kind of metaphor? Could it be related to some important figure?" Ji Zhuo was quick-witted; he immediately connected the dots and wondered if something was about to change.

Unfortunately, on a global scale, each of the billions of people is just a tiny shrimp. Even the President of the United States is swept away in a wave that could overturn the world.

"It's not a metaphor, it literally means the world is going to end." Xiang Yu didn't mince words, just repeated it, "Seriously, you guys need to have some backbone. Even when that young girl found out about this, she wasn't this scared... Look at how your legs are shaking."

"Who, who's shaking?" Li Yiheng was shaking like a leaf, the sand and gravel under his feet were shaken up, as if he were dancing.

Ji Zhuo took a deep breath, then pulled out a pack of Daqianmen cigarettes, took one out, and handed the pack to Xiang Yu: "Section Chief, I need to have a smoke to calm down. Want one?"

Seeing Xiang Yu shake his head, he offered one to Li Yiheng. The two grown men huddled together, their hands trembling so much they couldn't even aim the flame at the cigarette butt. They struck the match several times, burning their hands in the process, cursing under their breath, before finally managing to light their cigarettes.

Then the two of them started blowing smoke into the moat.

As soon as the smoke entered his lungs, Ji Zhuo visibly steadied himself. The smoke he exhaled still rippled in the wind like a soft wave, but he was finally able to stand.

"Section Chief Xiang, I have a daughter who is only three years old. I'm still worried about which kindergarten she should attend after the New Year."

He closed his eyes, took a deep drag, and the cigarette butt glowed red in the twilight. "Now you need a household registration to get into a good school. My second brother works in the city and has a city household registration. I was thinking of transferring my daughter's household registration to my second brother's house so she could go to a kindergarten in the city."

"Then you can go on to primary school in the city. As long as your grades are slightly better, you can get into a key middle school... and finally get into a good university. The requirements aren't high, just a second-tier university or above, preferably a first-tier university."

"You're thinking quite far ahead." Xiang Yu lay on the riverbank, basking in the sun.

"My girlfriend has been talking to me about this. We were planning to use our connections to transfer my household registration after the New Year..." Ji Zhuo slowly sat down. "Then we got this case. I was thinking that after I finished this case, I would go to see my second brother... but then I ran into you, Section Chief, and that's when I found out about the apocalypse."

"I was thinking, I've worked hard for half my life, and I'm finally about to settle down, but before I could even get comfortable, it's the end of the world... Is that right?" He threw the cigarette butt to his feet, crushed it out with his foot, and pulled out a new one from the box.

"The thing is, my daughter is only three years old, you know? She's so cute. When she finds something delicious, she'll secretly hide it and then wait until no one's around before saying to me, 'Daddy, here's some for you.'" Ji Zhu lit a cigarette, tears suddenly streaming down his face, his voice hoarse: "And then you tell me she can't go to kindergarten? She can't call me 'Daddy' anymore? She'll never grow up?"

Just as Xiang Yu was about to say something, An Ling suddenly walked over and said to Ji Zhuo, "Uncle, don't cry... let's think of a way."

"What…" Ji Zhuo wiped away his tears and looked at An Ling, whose face was resolute. "Girl, what are you saying?"

"I... my dad works in a big city. He hasn't been home for many years. The last time I saw him was when I was just starting junior high school." An Ling pursed her lips. "He said that overtime pay is higher, especially during the Chinese New Year, so he doesn't come home."

The setting sun bathed half of her face in a warm red glow, while the other half was already shrouded in shadow.

"He heard that high school girls in big cities were into wearing down jackets called 'Bosideng'; the trendy ones also bought something called an MP3 player, saying it was useful for learning English. He didn't know anything about it, but every year during the Lunar New Year, he would buy all of these things one by one and ask someone to bring them back to me from afar... Just recently."

An Ling took a deep breath: "But my dad doesn't know that there are no electronics stores in our county that can store new songs on MP3 players, so I can only listen to the default songs that come pre-installed on the MP3 player over and over again... 'Swallow,' 'Boundless Oceans, Vast Skies,' and 'Glorious Years.'"

"Now... I can sing them all."

Then she began to sing softly, her voice so delicate it was almost carried away by the river breeze:

"Forgive me for my untamed and free-spirited nature throughout my life... but I also fear that one day I will fall..."

Her Cantonese was very broken, and it was mixed with an indescribable local accent, but she could really sing.

"Hehe... I was originally planning to buy a train ticket and visit my dad after the college entrance exam next year." An Ling buried her head in her knees, curling up into a small ball. "That was my original plan..."

The air suddenly felt heavy, as heavy as the silt at the bottom of a river. The group of people sat there, no one speaking, watching the sun sink inch by inch, finally disappearing slowly into the cluster of tall and short buildings in the county town, leaving its last trace of red on the horizon.

Xiang Yu suddenly stood up and held out his hand to Ji Zhuo: "Give me a cigarette."

Ji Zhuo was taken aback, then handed the cigarette to Xiang Yu.

Xiang Yu didn't smoke the cigarette; he simply tapped the cigarette holder lightly with his finger and flicked it.

"Smack."

Everyone looked in the direction of the sound and saw that the light cigarette was now deeply embedded in the stone railing beside them, with most of the cigarette body gone and only the white filter tip trembling slightly outside.

It was a solid piece of bluestone, which was pierced through by a cigarette.

"Why are you all so downcast? It's like there's really nothing we can do." Xiang Yu put his hands behind his back. "I'm just letting you know that this is happening. It's not like we're just supposed to wait to die."

Ji Zhuo suddenly looked up, oblivious to the cigarette slipping from his fingers: "Could it be...?"

"I have a way, but the prerequisite is that you have to follow my orders... Also, don't be cowards." Xiang Yu turned around, his eyes shining. "Although we are as insignificant as dust, who says that dust cannot move the world? Billions of years ago, a single cyanobacteria caused the Great Explosion."

"You two, once you get back to the station, compile a list of all the recent unsolved cases and make me a copy."

"Of course, it's not just from our county. If you have connections and can get files from other cities, that would be even better."

Ji Zhuo was taken aback, then said with some excitement, "Is there any hope if we just do this?"

Xiang Yu spoke eloquently: "There is definitely hope. You have to believe in the power of miracles. You know, there was a man named Luo Ji. He wasn't a hero, just one of the ordinary people. But when all the big shots known as 'Wallfacers' were defeated by aliens and fell to their knees, he stood up, saved the Earth, and led humanity through the apocalypse."

"Hey, was there really such a person in history?"

"Oh no, he's not a historical figure." Xiang Yu smiled. "He probably won't appear for another eight or nine years."