The Secrets I Know

“He was teaching you how to be a good person, Linglong.”

Song Caitang said these words gently and calmly, but the weight of these words were enough to nearly knock its listener out.

Linglong’s eyes were bloodshot as she stared at Song Caitang dazedly, as though she had been hit in the face by these words.

But Song Caitang was not done with her yet. She stared steely at Linglong and went on, “He used the very limited time he had with you to try and teach you how to become someone with a broader mind and magnanimous heart who would not harbor anger and hate toward the world you’re in. He wanted you to become a better version of yourself. Even though you kept challenging him and did so many inappropriate things, he continued to use his life to protect you because he wanted you to live well, to enjoy your future. And…this is how you repay him?”

“Each time you killed someone, you were spitting on his faith, spitting on his efforts toward you.”

“You don’t trust the authorities, you don’t believe in the law. But you’ve forgotten – Jing Yan himself represents both of those things.”

Linglong trembled all over.

She understood what Song Caitang was saying. She understood it so well. Jing Yan was not only someone who worked for the authorities to uphold the law, but he had also sacrificed everything he had for its sake, including his own life. Even so, he remained as steady as a mountain, his faith unwavering!

What she had done…wasn’t to avenge him at all. She had delivered a stab to his heart!

Jing Yan…had been teaching her all along!

Tears instantly poured down her face.

Song Caitang’s gentle voice resounded in her ears again, “Don’t you want to do something to support what Jing Yan persisted in, what Jing Yan trusted in?”

“Song Caitang, you big fat liar! You’re trapping me with words again…” wailed Linglong as she covered her face with both hands and sobbed miserably. “But…I can’t say no…I can’t…”

Jing Yan was her motivation for hanging on until today. If she continued down the wrong path despite knowing it was wrong, then what was she living for?

What was she looking for all her life? She had been trying to find something in herself to make herself worthy of someone like Jing Yan!

Song Caitang was a clever and cruel woman at the same time.

Why did she have to burst her bubble? Why did she have to come and tell her all these things…

“What else do you want to know? I’ll tell you everything, happy now?!” she glared fiercely at Song Caitang.

Song Caitang sighed. She didn’t want to do this either. She had always been a kindhearted woman, after al.

“Just tell me what else you know, like whom Zhao Zhong is really working for, your hit list and so on.”

Linglong bit her lip. “I don’t know whom Zhao Zhong is really working for. I purposely said that to make you feel anxious and paranoid, since you bullied me into talking!”
As for her hit list…

She walked toward her cupboard, opened it and started rummaging through it. As she did that, she yelled loudly at Song Caitang, “You can stop acting now! You’ve got more companions outside the room, right? Tell them to come in and we can all hear what I have to say together!”

It didn’t take long for the other three to sit down at the same table. After all…it was tiring to balance themselves on a window ledge.

Linglong retrieved a piece of paper with names written on it from a secret compartment inside her cupboard, then looked around and spotted that clay doll. She figured that was how the investigation team had discovered her secrets.

“I only have one thing from him and you managed to find it…”

She checked the doll and breathed a sigh of relief when she was sure it wasn’t damaged in any way, then brought it back to her seat.

Song Caitang took the list from her. “We stumbled on it that day. We didn’t know you were so good at hiding things either.”

Linglong scoffed and ignored her as she just looked gently at the doll in her hands.

After checking out the list, Song Caitang exchanged glances with the other three men.

They were too late. Everyone on this list was dead. She had killed them all.

Linglong touched the doll’s head very, very carefully. “He had always been a very cautious man, so he never left anything behind. Even until he died, I didn’t possess anything that was connected to him, not even a piece of clothing, only this doll that we made together… Thankfully, I’m about to head to where he is.”

She didn’t seem sad at all that she was going to die. “It’s good that your team is in charge of this matter. With Prince Ping, Mr. Wen and his relative in the team, I’m sure you’d be able to get to the bottom of this, and he would be able to rest in peace… I don’t have to worry about anything.”

“About Jiang Shaoyuan, don’t think he’s an innocent party. I know he’s killed someone before.”

Linglong spoke slowly and calmly. Not only did she tell them about Jiang Shaoyuan, but she also went through every name on her list, what they did, when they did it, what evidence she had gathered, what witnesses she had heard from…

Everything was recounted in great detail.

Zhao Zhi and Qi Yan paid close attention to her, while Wen Yuansi took out some paper and ink to take her statement down.

After they had finished asking her about the case, Song Caitang stopped to think, then mentioned her father, “I suppose you know a man named Song Yi from Zhending?”

Linglong stared at Song Caitang for a while and asked her a question in return, “You’ve suspected this for a while, haven’t you?”

Song Caitang smiled.

“I just remembered how you came by the other day and tried to ask me about someone by the surname Song, and then tried to explain that there was a victim named Song Mingli… I’m the killer, so of course I know the names of all my victims. I would know if there’s a Song Mingli. Actually, you were trying to ask about Song Yi, right?” Linglong was rather curious. “Who are you to Song Yi? Based on your age…” She looked Song Caitang up and down “You’re his daughter?”

Song Caitang nodded and did not deny it. “I am.”

Linglong frowned. “You’re very bold for admitting to that. What happened to all the clever and careful talking you did earlier?”

Song Caitang just smiled.

“Forget it, I make too many comments. You’re so clever, so I’m sure you’re very confident of your conjectures, plus you’ve got someone by your side,” Linglong glanced at Zhao Zhi, “so you’re not afraid of being in danger.”

Zhao Zhi’s brows were like a pair of sharpened swords. “Miss Linglong, please answer the question.”

“I haven’t even done anything to her and you’re already so protective?” said Linglong in a mocking yet envious voice. “Are you bullying me because the one I have in heaven can’t help me?”

Qi Yan interjected, “Miss Linglong…”

“Forget it,” Linglong smiled at Qi Yan, as though she was a kind elder of his. “I won’t leave you hanging, on account of him.”

“Mr. Song was a good man. He helped me before, so I remembered that well.”

Song Caitang was a little hesitant, but asked anyway, “Your portrait…”

“Did you suspect that we might have been in a relationship?” Linglong laughed. “Don’t worry, I only have Jing Yan in my heart, and your father isn’t someone who patronizes brothels. His heart never changed even after your mother died for so many years, so he’s a rare one. We didn’t share any feelings for each other at all. He helped me before, so I wanted to help him in return. That’s all.”

“We were unlucky enough to go through some things and he helped me a lot. Later on, some trouble came and I sensed something wrong, so I sent him a letter to tell him about it and said that he could look for me if he needed help. And because a long time had already passed since we first met, I was afraid he would have forgotten what I looked like and drew a portrait of myself.”

“I wasn’t very old back then and I was afraid he might not trust me because of that, so I purposely drew myself a little older.”

She continued explaining, “But he still didn’t trust me, or maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe he just wanted to stay where his wife was buried and didn’t want to go too far from her, so he did not look for me to help…”

Those words helped to fill up some gaps in Song Caitang’s memory.

Her father, Song Yi, was not from Zhending. His hometown was not far from Luanze, so why did he end up travelling all the way to Zhending? He would also move toward the border from time to time too. It wasn’t because he was the adventurous type, but because he was hiding from trouble.

It wasn’t that he didn’t miss home or did not want to go back. It was just that at first, he had to stay away to avoid trouble, then later on…his wife passed away and he couldn’t bear to leave anymore.

He did not correspond much with Linglong. Perhaps the three times she saw was everything. After all, if it wasn’t something important or urgent enough, Linglong wouldn’t write to him.

But…

“Why?” Song Caitang pursed her lips slightly as she looked at Linglong. “What matter was he involved in? Who did he offend?”

Linglong ended up finding out about the organization that was betraying the country because she was trying to find a way to get closer to Jing Yan, so Song Caitang couldn’t help but wonder if her father was somehow connected to this matter as well.

Linglong let out a long sigh. “I don’t know what you know or how much you’ve managed to guess, but we’ve got to start from the bandit raid on Beiqing Mountain that happened 18 years ago.”

18 years ago.

These words were like a curse of sorts to the team. All four of them gasped quietly. How was everything connected to 18 years ago?!

Qi Yan couldn’t hold his curiosity back. “What in the world happened 18 years ago on Beiqing Mountain?!”

Linglong paused for a moment, then said, “I had been kept in captivity on the mountain, then sold off after that, so I don’t know very much. But there was one thing I remembered, which I don’t think a lot of people know about – there was a child that night.”

Qi Yan was even more curious. “A child?”

“To be exact, it was a baby,” said Linglong after careful thought. “I was young but I had a good memory. Those were the cries of a newborn baby…”

“Some people were trying to snatch this baby. I managed to steal a quick glance and couldn’t see exactly how many people or groups of people there were, but I remember one person very clearly. His eye sockets were deep, his nose was hooked, and…I couldn’t understand a word he said. Later on, after interacting with foreign merchants at parties and all that, I found out that language and accent belonged to the people of Liao.”

“That man’s clothing and hairstyle were not particularly strange, but the materials used for his clothes were of high quality and he even had gemstones on his belt. He must have been no ordinary man…” Linglong’s expression was solemn as she recounted these things. “But why would someone like that appear in such a place at such a time, and try and grab hold of a newborn baby?”

She didn’t know why and couldn’t figure it out either.

In any case, she was eventually captured by a bad guy and sold off to a brothel after that. It was a chaotic night and she couldn’t see much, but she knew that it had been a dangerous night.

“As for Mr. Song, he was a coroner then. Many people died during that battle on Beiqing Mountain and he was one of the coroners who had been urgently sent over to help. But I didn’t get to know him then. It was more than two years later, when I got into some trouble and Mr. Song helped me. At that time, I didn’t know that both of us were connected to that raid 18 years ago on Beiqing Mountain. I just remembered that he had helped me and remembered who he was…”

Linglong’s voice sounded a little faraway as she recalled the past, “About ten, or maybe eleven years ago, a lot of people died and everything seemed normal on the surface, but they were actually all connected to what happened 18 years ago. I went to check it out and found out that Mr. Song had been a coroner for that raid, but he was living neither in the capital nor his hometown, but all the way in Zhending instead… I felt that there was something unusual about this matter, so I wrote to him to be careful.”

Zhao Zhi tapped his fingers against the table. “This has something to do with this treasonist we’re looking for?”

“I’m not sure,” Linglong shook her head. “I don’t have enough information to confirm that, but many of the people who’ve died are victims who were implicated later on. They don’t seem to have direct connections to the box pattern, salt shipping or the secret gold shipping routes, so they don’t seem to be part of this organization.”

Then what was it?

It seemed like everyone shared some sort of commonality with each other. So many people had died but they had died separately. It seemed normal, but also seemed like they had been silenced…

What had these people done wrong?

Or…what had they seen? Or found out?

Who was this child? Why would an upper class Liao person want to grab it?

And there was one more question…

Song Caitang suddenly thought of it. “You said the baby seemed to be a newborn?”

“Yes.” Linglong had been young then and wasn’t sure, but she was very sure now that she knew a lot more about the world. That child was definitely a newborn.

Song Caitang narrowed her eyes. “If a baby had just been born, it also means that there must have been a woman who had just given birth.”

That made Linglong frown immediately. “If there was such a woman, she wasn’t among us at Beiqing Mountain.”

Her voice was clear and confident. “The bad people who made their base on Beiqing Mountain were a bunch of bandits, but they had very strict rules. For example, regardless of where they had captured a woman from, the women could only move within a certain restricted area and nowhere else, not even if a bandit had captured her for himself. If they were discovered in some other place, they would be killed. There were a lot of rooms and women in the place where we were held captive, but none of them were pregnant, never mind give birth.”