The autumn wind swept through the woods, lifting Xu Jiu’s long hair. Strands fell across her line of sight, almost blocking her view of the photograph on the gravestone.
The person in the photograph was very young—twenty-four years old, with thick eyebrows, large eyes, and the corners of his mouth slightly curled upward. He wore an especially cocky smile, as though he looked down disdainfully on all the darkness in the world.
He was clearly seven years older than her, yet compared to the Xu Jiu of the present, he was so, so much younger.
Xu Jiu stared at the photograph for a long while before slowly speaking.
“Jiang Yanzhi, I came to see you.”
The wind passed through the white birch trees, rustling their leaves, as though answering on someone’s behalf.
“I performed an autopsy on a female corpse today.”
Xu Jiu was the most experienced female forensic pathologist at the Harbin Public Security Bureau. She had been in the profession for more than twenty years and had dissected over a thousand bodies. She had seen every imaginable manner of death.
But this one was different.
“The deceased was a thirty-year-old woman. Her face was congested, with petechial hemorrhaging in the conjunctiva. She died from strangulation with a cord-like object. The murder weapon was suspected to be a pair of stockings. There was no evidence of sexual assault before or after death. There was an eight-centimeter-long sharp-force wound on the abdomen, and the liver was missing…”
Xu Jiu paused.
She raised her eyes and stared at Jiang Yanzhi’s black-and-white photograph.
“Do you know who this manner of death reminded me of?”
No one answered.
Xu Jiu continued.
“My mother. She died in exactly the same way.”
The wind suddenly grew stronger, blowing the white chrysanthemums in front of the gravestone this way and that.
Xu Jiu’s eyes reddened.
“It’s been thirty-nine years. My mother’s case has never been solved, and it even caused you to…”
Her voice caught.
The word *die* stuck in her throat like a thorn she could never swallow.
“I extracted new physical evidence from the female corpse. It’s already been sent to the forensic laboratory. We should have the results soon. I have a feeling that this time, there will be a breakthrough.”
She reached out and gently touched the photograph on the gravestone.
“I’ve always regretted it. If I hadn’t driven you away when you came to celebrate my birthday with me that day, would you have survived…?”
The wind rose again.
Tears slipped down Xu Jiu’s face.
“I was too stupid. I let other people turn me against you so easily, and I cared too much about my pride. I was the one who caused your death. This time, I’ll catch the murderer and avenge my mother and you…”
Footsteps behind her interrupted her words.
Before she could turn around, something slammed into the back of her head.
A dull pain instantly spread from the base of her skull across the entire top of her head, accompanied by intense nausea and dizziness. She collapsed heavily onto the ground.
Pain.
Her head felt as though it had exploded.
The force of that blow…
Had her skull been fractured?
Was she dead now?
“Did you guys hear about the abandoned-baby case on the school field this morning?”
“I heard. It scared the hell out of me. Apparently, it was a newborn baby, just left under the basketball hoop.”
“The police are here too. They’re in the principal’s office.”
The cemetery had been perfectly quiet. Why was it suddenly so noisy?
Had someone discovered her and taken her to the hospital?
“Xu Jiu, Xu Jiu! The bell rang! Stop sleeping! It’s the homeroom teacher’s class!”
That voice sounded familiar, but for a moment, she couldn’t remember whose it was.
But what basketball court? What abandoned baby? What homeroom teacher?
Wasn’t she supposed to be at the cemetery, talking to Jiang Yanzhi?
Xu Jiu struggled to lift her eyelids.
Her vision remained blurry for several seconds before gradually coming into focus.
A face was right in front of her.
A round face, large eyes, and a high ponytail revealing a smooth forehead.
Familiar.
Very familiar.
Xu Jiu’s brain was like an old machine, turning slowly and laboriously. At last, she recognized the girl in front of her.
Her high school deskmate, Zhou Meng.
What year had they last seen each other?
Eight years ago, a neighbor of Zhou Meng’s had reported a terrible stench coming from her house. When the police arrived, they discovered that Zhou Meng had died at home.
She had been forty years old, with an obese body and a face covered in wrinkles. There wasn’t a single part of her body that was uninjured.
The murderer had been the husband who, at their wedding, had cried and promised to love and cherish her for the rest of her life.
What was going on now?
Not only was Zhou Meng alive, she was more than twenty years younger!
Zhou Meng was startled by Xu Jiu’s gaze and instinctively leaned backward.
“Xu Jiu, what’s wrong with you?”
Xu Jiu’s gaze moved past Zhou Meng’s shoulder and swept across the entire classroom.
Old-fashioned wooden windows, their glass coated with a layer of dust.
Blue wooden desks and blue wooden chairs.
Above the blackboard, the words **“Study Hard and Strive Every Day”** had been painted in red spray paint.
“Did you get heatstroke?”
Zhou Meng waved a hand in front of her face. With her other hand, she offered Xu Jiu a small white handkerchief.
“You look awful. And you’re crying.”
Xu Jiu stared blankly before raising a hand to touch her face.
Her fingertips encountered moisture.
She didn’t know when it had started, but tears had silently streamed down her entire face.
She looked at her own hand.
There were no calluses yet—the ones left behind by years of holding a scalpel during autopsies.
A ridiculous thought suddenly surfaced in her mind.
She looked up at the blackboard.
In the lower-right corner was a list of students assigned to classroom duties. A class schedule was posted on the left.
And in the upper-left corner, written in chalk, were the words:
“277 days until the Gaokao.”
Had she been reborn?!
Had she returned to a high school classroom in 1996, when she was in her final year before the college entrance examination?
The classroom door was pushed open.
Her homeroom teacher, Yang Zhen, walked in carrying a stack of exam papers under his arm. The expression on his face was as stern as ever.
He stood at the podium, then used one hand to comb the hair on the right side of his head over to the left, covering the completely bald patch in the middle.
“Sir, what’s going on outside? Who abandoned the baby?”
The homeroom teacher’s expression darkened.
He tapped the podium with the blackboard eraser.
“Get back to your seats. Stop making such a racket. Can’t you hear the bell? You’re wasting your time worrying about things that have nothing to do with you. Why don’t you see how many points you can actually score?”
The classroom quieted considerably.
The teacher’s gaze swept across the students.
“There are only nine months left until the college entrance examination. Your top priority is improving your grades. Everything else is beyond your concern.”
Teacher Yang unfolded the papers, shook them into place, and placed one on the first desk of each row.
“Pass them back.”
Xu Jiu’s head was splitting with pain.
She needed to figure out whether she was dreaming.
Whether that blow had given her a concussion.
Whether she was actually lying in a hospital bed, dreaming some absurd, nonsensical dream.
Before she could sort anything out, the classroom door was pushed open again.
The director of student affairs, Old Liu, poked half his body through the doorway and called to the homeroom teacher.
“Teacher Yang, could you have Xu Jiu come out for a moment?”
The homeroom teacher stepped down from the podium.
“What is it?”
Old Liu didn’t elaborate.
“She’ll know when she comes out.”
The homeroom teacher beckoned to Xu Jiu.
“Xu Jiu, come out for a moment.”
Every student in the class immediately turned to look at her.
Xu Jiu still hadn’t completely recovered from the shock of being reborn. Hearing that they wanted her outside, she slowly stood up.
Her legs were slightly weak, as though she were walking on cotton, and everything still felt unreal.
Zhou Meng nervously tugged at her sleeve and whispered,
“What’s going on?”
Xu Jiu shook her head.
She didn’t know either.
The homeroom teacher put down the papers and addressed the class.
“Keep quiet. Start working on the exam. If you don’t know something, skip it for now. Do the questions you know first.”
Teacher Yang walked out of the classroom with her.
The sunlight in the corridor was dazzling, so bright that Xu Jiu narrowed her eyes.
When she opened them again, she saw two men standing at the far end of the corridor.
One was tall and thin, with deeply tanned skin. He held a kraft-paper envelope in his hand and had a somewhat simple, honest-looking face.
It was hard to imagine that this man would one day rise to the position of deputy bureau chief.
Behind him stood an even taller man.
Under his black jacket, he wore a simple black undershirt. He leaned casually against a pillar in the corridor, his posture loose and relaxed, his entire body radiating an air of boredom.
His jawline was sharply defined, his brow bones high, and the corners of his mouth slightly turned downward, making him look somewhat irritable.
His features were striking, angular and well-defined. With high brow bones and slightly sunken eye sockets, his dark eyes swept toward her.
The next moment, his gaze met hers directly.
Xu Jiu’s fingers clenched abruptly, her nails digging into her palms.
The pain was so real.
The sunlight outside the window was real.
The slogans echoing from the school field were real.
The banners hanging in the corridor proclaiming **“There Is No End to Learning”** were real.
And the man standing outside the classroom door was real too.
Xu Jiu suddenly found herself unable to move.
Her legs seemed nailed to the spot.
Her pupils contracted violently.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
It felt as though someone had a hand around her throat, squeezing her windpipe until only a narrow passage remained, allowing nothing but broken breaths to escape.
The man she had seen countless times in her dreams.
The man whose image had appeared again and again in the footage from police body cameras.
The man whose name had appeared repeatedly in the mountains of files stored in the public security bureau’s archives.
Jiang Yanzhi.
Twenty-four-year-old Jiang Yanzhi.
Jiang Yanzhi, who wasn’t dead yet.
Who hadn’t yet been stabbed repeatedly.
Who hadn’t yet lain at the end of a hospital corridor with a white cloth covering his face.
Xu Jiu’s body reacted before her mind could.
She instinctively ran toward him.
Old Liu was startled and shouted from behind her,
“Xu Jiu!”
The corridor was long.
A draft blew in through the open windows, making her school uniform skirt billow.
Her canvas shoes struck the terrazzo floor in rapid succession.
Jiang Yanzhi was famous for his lightning-fast reactions within the criminal police squad.
Ordinary people often hadn’t even figured out what was happening before his hand had already reached for the gun at his waist.
But this time, his hand didn’t move.
Because the person running toward him was Xu Jiu.
Xu Jiu crashed straight into his arms.
Her arms wrapped tightly around his waist, and she buried her face against his chest as though she wanted to fuse herself into his body.
She smelled a faint scent of soap mixed with a hint of tobacco.
There could not have been anything more unmistakably alive than that scent.
“Hey, student!”
Qin Shuo, who was standing beside Jiang Yanzhi, immediately reached out to pull Xu Jiu away.
“What are you doing?”
Hearing the commotion, students began poking their heads out through both the front and back doors of the classroom.
The moment they saw what was happening, the hallway erupted.
Somebody asked,
“Has Xu Jiu gone crazy?”
Xu Jiu clutched the fabric at the back of Jiang Yanzhi’s shirt, her knuckles trembling slightly from the force of her grip.
“Jiang Yanzhi… Jiang Yanzhi…”
She was like a drowning person who had finally grabbed hold of the last piece of driftwood.
She refused to let go, no matter what.
Old Liu’s face turned dark with alarm.
He rushed over in three quick strides and reached for Xu Jiu’s arm.
“Xu Jiu! What are you doing? Let go! Hurry up! He’s an actual police officer!”
Jiang Yanzhi frowned.
“Don’t touch her.”
Old Liu shuddered and immediately withdrew his hand.
He looked at Jiang Yanzhi in confusion, then at the helpless-looking Qin Shuo beside him.
“Officer, you see…”
Jiang Yanzhi lowered his head and looked at Xu Jiu, who was trembling violently in his arms.
His brows furrowed so deeply they looked as though they could crush a fly.
He couldn’t understand why Xu Jiu, who had always gone out of her way to avoid him, had suddenly thrown herself at him.
Nor could he understand why his chest felt warm and damp.
Everyone soon realized something was wrong.
Xu Jiu was crying.
Not merely shedding silent tears.
Her shoulders were shaking with every sob, and suppressed whimpers escaped from her throat, as though something inside her had been crushed to pieces and was slowly spilling out.
The students in the classroom looked at one another, unable to make sense of the situation.
Someone finally couldn’t hold back and asked aloud,
“Is Xu Jiu crying?”
“What’s going on?”
“The school’s little princess actually cries?”
Xu Jiu was notorious in class for being difficult to get along with.
She wasn’t particularly close to anyone. She had a short fuse, skipped classes whenever she felt like it, and refused to do her homework whenever she didn’t want to.
Relying on her wealthy family and decent grades, she didn’t even take the teachers seriously.
The homeroom teacher abruptly turned around and glared toward the classroom.
Everyone immediately ducked back inside, afraid to show their faces again.
Once Jiang Yanzhi confirmed that the warmth against his chest was Xu Jiu’s tears, his gaze suddenly sharpened.
He raised a hand and gripped her shoulder, trying to see what exactly was wrong.
But Xu Jiu refused to let go.
“Who bullied you?”
Xu Jiu shook her head.
Who would dare bully her?
“Xu Jiu, look up.”