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Kapitel 13

"Then take some time to go shopping and buy Xiaotong a gift. I'm busy here and can't find the time," Qin Ge said.

"I'm not asking you to do anything. Just remember the time." Dong'er said seriously. "I'll let you do whatever you want with everything else, but you absolutely cannot miss Xiaotong's birthday party, no matter what the reason or what happens."

Qin Ge nodded repeatedly: "Okay, this matter will definitely not be delayed."

"Whose child is Xiaotong? Our Captain Qin wouldn't be so honest with just anyone," He Lan laughed.

“You’ve met her.” Qin Ge didn’t even look up. “Last time we had dinner, we ran into a family of three at the restaurant, and I even sat down and chatted with them for a while. The little girl inside is Xiaotong.”

"Ma Nan!" He Lan's voice suddenly rose considerably.

Qin Ge and Dong'er stared at her together, and Qin Ge chuckled, "Why are you so excited about Ma Nan's name?"

“I’ve heard people in the team mention Ma Nan. They all say he’s unfathomable, a writer who works part-time at the university, and that he not only helped you solve the case but also has a legendary past. I’ve heard that name so many times I’m sick of it, but no one can tell me the whole story. Everyone says you’re friends with Ma Nan, so you know the most about him. I’ve asked you for help so many times, but you always said you were too busy. It’s been more than half a year now, and today you have to tell me all about him.”

Before Qin Ge could speak, Dong'er laughed first: "I've already learned that your Captain Qin is unreliable."

“Yes.” Helan nodded. “I’m going all out today. If he doesn’t talk, I definitely won’t let him get away with it.”

Qin Ge smiled at He Lan and took a sip of beer: "It's not that I'm keeping you in suspense, it's just that Ma Nan doesn't want others to know about his affairs. But since you want to hear it, I'll tell you all about it today."

So that night, Qin Ge seriously told He Lan Ma Nan's story in the restaurant.

Ma Nan, a man of vast knowledge, helped the criminal investigation team solve numerous cases, the most famous being the Puya ethnic group serial killer case. Before committing a crime, the killer would always grant his victim a wish, and after the murder, he would sadly set off a dazzling firework. At every crime scene, the police could always find markings left by the killer—feathers and maple leaves, a double dragon tai chi symbol, and a nine-square diagram—which successively became key to solving the cases. On one occasion, Qin Ge sought out Ma Nan, and after Ma Nan solved one mystery after another, the killer was finally brought to light.

While assisting the police in solving the case, Ma Nan did not expect that he would later find himself in danger.

The story Qin Ge is about to tell happened half a year ago.

Ma Nan suffers from selective amnesia and has been desperately searching for answers about his past. One day, he and several college students started a game involving codes. Suddenly, someone broke in, cracked the codes, and left behind a disc. Guided by the disc, Ma Nan arrived at a crime scene and witnessed the victim's extremely horrific and bizarre death, which awakened some dormant memories within him.

What happened next was truly unbelievable. The contents of the disc, along with Ma Nan's vaguely awakened memories, told him that he once had a wife and daughter, but he couldn't remember where they were. Then, a mysterious assassin suddenly appeared, beginning a deadly game with him. Ma Nan had to solve a series of puzzles to find his family. He traveled to several cities, gradually uncovering the truth about his origins.

Ma Nan was an orphan who was adopted by his foster father, Ba Rong, when he was young. Besides him, Ba Rong adopted six other children. Ma Nan's wife, Hong Mian, was also one of those six children. Ba Rong and the others lived together in a small town on the northwestern border, where they happily spent their childhood.

As the seven siblings grew up, Baron suddenly sent them to different cities, severing all contact between them, and then mysteriously disappeared. Before leaving, Baron left each child a jade artifact, and within these jade artifacts lay a tremendous secret—a secret connected to an ancient, unknown tribe.

To understand this story, you must first learn about that ancient tribe.

In ancient Chinese mythology, there is a legend of the Yellow Emperor battling Chiyou. It is said that to defeat Chiyou, the Yellow Emperor sent men to Mount Liubo in the East Sea to capture a wild beast called "Kui." After skinning and drying it, they covered it with a large drum, which became the Kui Drum. Having a drum also required drumsticks, but ordinary drumsticks wouldn't work. So the Yellow Emperor thought of the Thunder God who lived in Leize. The Thunder God, also known as the Thunder Beast, was a celestial being with a dragon's body and a human head. Every time it slapped its belly, a thunderclap would appear. This Thunder Beast was actually a rather famous celestial being in ancient times, but having caught the Yellow Emperor's eye, it too could not escape its fate.

The Yellow Emperor sent men to Leize to capture the Thunder Beast, and without saying a word, killed it. He then extracted the largest bone from its body and used it as a drumstick. When this Kui Drum Thunder Hammer was struck, the sound was louder than thunder, and it was said that it could be heard from 500 li away.

Later, the Yellow Emperor used the Kui drum and thunder hammer to strike the battlefield nine times. Sure enough, the valleys echoed, the heavens and earth changed color, and the Yellow Emperor's military might was greatly boosted. Chi You's army was terrified, losing most of its fighting strength in an instant. The Yellow Emperor won a great victory. Later, the Yellow Emperor received military strategies from the Nine Heavens Mystic Maiden, finally defeating Chi You's army. However, Chi You possessed the ability to fly and traverse treacherous mountains, and although defeated, the Yellow Emperor could not capture him. Finally, he used the thunder hammer to strike the Kui drum nine times again. Chi You immediately lost his mind and could not move, finally allowing the Yellow Emperor to capture him.

After defeating Chi You, the Yellow Emperor killed him in a place called Zhuolu. However, fearing that Chi You's spirit might not die and could seize the opportunity to rebel again and wreak havoc on the world, he imprisoned Chi You's spirit within his severed head and entrusted it to Taihao, the then Eastern Heavenly Emperor, for safekeeping. Taihao was none other than Fuxi. Feeling a great responsibility upon accepting this task, he selected a group of skilled warriors from his own clan to guard Chi You's head.

Along with Chi You's head, other items were delivered to the Fuxi clan, one of which was the Thunder God's Hammer.

The hammer of Thor, the bones of the Thunder God in Leize, is said to be the place where Fuxi's mother, Huaxu, conceived and gave birth to Fuxi after stepping on the Thunder God's footprint. The Yellow Emperor returned the Thunder God's remains to the Fuxi clan, possibly out of some remorse for Fuxi—in order to defeat Chiyou, he indiscriminately sent people to capture and kill the Thunder God.

Many years later, the descendants of Fuxi established the Ba Kingdom in the southwest, which flourished for a time before being destroyed by Qin and gradually disappearing into the long river of history. However, one branch of the Ba people survived. They were the brave warriors personally selected by Fuxi from among his people. For generations, they guarded the head of Chiyou and the hammer of the Thunder God, truly like the characters in the Peach Blossom Spring, "unaware of the existence of the Han Dynasty, let alone the Wei and Jin Dynasties," silently multiplying and thriving in the long river of history.

Manan's adoptive father, Balong, was one of the leaders of the Ba tribe. Unable to bear seeing his people sell the sacred artifacts they had guarded for thousands of years to a foreign land, he resolutely stole the artifacts with the tribe's high shaman, and from then on, lived in anonymity, wandering the world. The reason he later sent away his adopted children was because he realized the Ba people had discovered his whereabouts. He hid the stolen head of Chiyou, the hammer of the Thunder God, and other treasures within several jade artifacts.

For decades, the Ba people had never ceased their search for those sacred artifacts. This time, having obtained a clue, they dispatched their tribal assassin, Yu Lei, to search for the five jade pieces. However, they knew that to decipher the hidden code within the jade, they needed the help of Ma Nan. Therefore, they devised a plan, sending Ma Nan to several cities to search for his brothers and sisters.

In Shanghai, Ma Nan rescued his sister Chu Yan, but was powerless to stop Yu Lei from killing his four other brothers. Fortunately, he managed to collect five jade artifacts and decipher the code left by his adoptive father, Ba Rong.

He hadn't expected that the secret within the jade artifact was that Ba Rong wanted him to return to that small town on the northwestern frontier. In that town, the old man selling wine revealed his identity: he was the great shaman of the Ba tribe who had rebelled against the tribe along with Ba Rong. He helped Ma Nan regain his lost memories—Ba Rong had hidden the secret of that treasure within Ma Nan's memories.

The recovered memories reminded Manan that his father had buried a sacred object of the Ba people in the "Kuncang" temple. In order to find his wife Hongmian and daughter Xiaotong, Manan led the Ba people to "Kuncang" to retrieve the sacred object.

On Peach Blossom Mountain, the "Kun Cang" temple turned out to be a labyrinth. The entire Ba people came out, but little did they know, it was all a trap meticulously laid by Ba Rong over decades. What Ba Rong left in the labyrinth was not a sacred object of the Ba people at all, but a deadly trap.

Batu, the leader of the Ba tribe, and his elite members perished in an explosion on Peach Blossom Mountain. Ma Nan, however, escaped with his sister Chu Yan at the last moment. At this time, Ba Rong, who had been in hiding for some time, finally revealed the truth. It turned out that he had betrayed his adopted children, using their deaths to gain the trust of the Ba people, all for the purpose of annihilating Batu and the Ba elites in the "Kun Cang" maze today.

There's another crucial element to this: Chu Yan is actually Ba Rong's biological daughter. It was she who revealed the code hidden in the jade artifact and the whereabouts of his brothers to the Ba people. Ba Rong's plan was for Ma Nan to die alongside the Ba people in the "Kun Cang" temple, thus making the plan perfect. But Chu Yan miraculously managed to pull Ma Nan away from danger at the last moment.

Ba Rong revealed the secret: Chu Yan had fallen in love with her older brother a long time ago.

Ba Rong's plan was flawless; by annihilating the Ba tribe's elite, he would have no further worries. But fate is unpredictable. He hadn't anticipated that the Ba tribe assassin Yu Lei wouldn't follow Ba Tu into the labyrinth. Yu Lei suddenly appeared at the last moment and killed Ba Rong.

With Ba Rong's death, the secret of the Ba tribe's sacred object was no longer known. Perhaps, the Ba tribe's sacred object would forever remain buried deep in the distant mountains and rivers, never to see the light of day again. As for Chu Yan, after telling Ma Nan about the whereabouts of his wife and daughters after her father's death, she also left quietly. Ma Nan searched for her in many ways, but could not find any news of her.

“Like the ending of a fairy tale, Ma Nan is now living a happy life with his wife and daughter,” Qin Ge concluded. “So he doesn’t want anything to disturb his current life anymore, and he doesn’t even want others to know that he had such an experience.”

Helan, who was standing nearby, was stunned. Although Dong'er knew a little about Ma Nan's experiences, she was also listening to Qin Ge recount them in such detail that night, so she was just as breathless as she was, and when she heard the tense parts, she was really worried for Ma Nan.

"I can't believe such a story is true, and it happened to someone right here among us," Helan exclaimed. "If I have the chance, I definitely want to meet this legendary Ma Nan."

“There will be opportunities,” Qin Ge said. “In the future, we might fight side by side again.”

That night, Qin Ge casually remarked something that unexpectedly came true very quickly. None of them anticipated that the torture video circulating online would eventually implicate Ma Nan as well, and that it was a continuation of the story that happened six months ago. The members of the ancient tribe were once again walking the city; what kind of thrilling story would they be enacting this time?

Act Two: Chrysanthemum Totem

Chapter 9

Many days passed, and Xingguan (the Detective) still hadn't appeared. Yang Zheng spent almost every night waiting online, sometimes exchanging a few words with Luo Bin. Luo Bin also wanted to help Xingguan, but without Xingguan's presence, Yang Zheng couldn't assist him. Luo Bin seemed even more anxious than Yang Zheng, asking almost daily if they had been able to contact Xingguan. At this point, Xingguan was just a symbol on the internet; without him, no one could do anything. Eventually, both Yang Zheng and Luo Bin began to suspect that Xingguan's appearance in the group that day was a prank, perhaps someone had simply come up with that name on a whim and had now forgotten about it.

Every night when Yang Zheng was online, he would open the chat window of the murder group and read what people were saying. The most popular topics were sadomasochistic relationships and all sorts of bizarre methods of killing.

The term "sadomasochism" is more readily accepted than "masochism" or "masochism." It refers to a sexual behavior and a complex psychological phenomenon, with Western scholars researching it much earlier than those in China. It's said that most people exhibit mild sadomasochistic tendencies during sexual activity, such as slight scratching or biting. However, this is usually unconscious; only a very small minority become addicted, gradually developing a need for violence to achieve satisfaction.

Ultimate violence is death, and death is a very big deal in reality. Ordinary people cannot experience death in reality, so imagination becomes the main way to experience it.

Here, you'll often hear about unique methods of murder that, if written into a novel, would be considered impossible crimes in the classic detective genre. But if you think about it carefully, most of them are impractical. It's like how mystery novelists can create the most perfect murders, but in reality, they've often never even killed a chicken.