A thousand shouted “Motherfucker!”s couldn’t express the bitterness of Su Qing’s emotions at this moment. He thought, Shit, Heaven’s landed me in it! 

Why wasn’t the person in front of him that girl who could be seen through even while handing out flyers? Why wasn’t it a special policeman who couldn’t do anything but charge under his boss’s orders? Why wasn’t it that Xu Ruchong, with his glasses like the bottoms of bottles? 

After telling his lie, Hu Bugui was no longer uneasy. He reached out to pick up the fake uncle whose arm he was kneeling on. He examined him out of professional habit, his eyes like a demon-reflecting mirror, sending out X-rays. 

Then, amid this wealth of mental activity, Su Qing performed an action. He carefully stood up, but he didn’t take Hu Bugui’s hand. Instead he climbed up his arm. He did it by stages. First he raised his head, opening a pair of frightened and panicked eyes wide and looking towards the captured blue seal. When he looked over and found there was nothing the matter, he patted himself on the chest, but was still in no hurry to stand up. Instead he craned his neck, putting on an appearance of excited observation. 

“Oh, hey, tsk-tsk…” He turned his profile, carefully altered to give the impression of age, towards Hu Bugui, and said in Mandarin thickened with a realistic southern accent, “In broad daylight! I was scared to death.” 

Hu Bugui frowned, thoughtfully looking this “middle-aged man” up and down. This man…really looked like him. 

From the corner of his eye, Su Qing saw Hu Bugui’s X-ray eyes still scanning him, so he disgustedly patted dust off his suit pants, not forgetting to look up and sneak glances to watch the fun, until the RZ Unit and the arrested blue seal had gone. 

Su Qing saw the man he had gotten his eye on put his head down and concentrate on his food. He thought, I need to think of a way to throw off this venerable great Buddha. 

So he turned with a smile that was both philistine and scrutinizing, warmly extending a hand towards Hu Bugui. “You’re a policeman? An honor, an honor. My nephew just graduated from the police academy this year and doesn’t know where to go to look for work. Your job looks pretty dangerous to me.” 

Hu Bugui hesitantly shook hands with him and smelled the nose-stinging fake cologne scent at his sleeve. Come summer, the mosquitoes probably wouldn’t come near him.

Su Qing searched and searched through his pockets, finally turning up a very flashy business card case and picking a card out to give to Hu Bugui. Hu Bugui felt an even thicker scent assault his nostrils. He sniffed, feeling that his sense of smell was about to give out, a little dizzy from the fumes. 

The title on the card was “Fresh Springs Hotel General Manager Li Meng.” It was edged in gold, as though giving a demonstration of what it meant to be “golden on the outside, rotten on the inside.” 

Hu Bugui felt it would be awkward not to take it, but he quietly took a step back. When he stepped back, Su Qing shuffled forward, blinking dead-fish eyes not as wide as his eye bags. With an unspeakable perverse excitement, pointing to the door, he asked in a low voice, “That man just now, what crime did he commit?” 

Hu Bugui’s eyes were still roving over Su Qing’s face. His initial suspicion at last slowly vanished. He felt that this man’s features only had a faint resemblance to Su Qing’s. The temperament and age were entirely inconsistent—if you said that age could be faked, then there was still…

Captain Hu watched the man grin. The smile twisted his mouth, making him look even more vulgar. 

Why would he think that this old man looked like him? Hu Bugui inwardly gave a self-mocking bitter laugh. 

In Hu Bugui’s mind, Su Qing always had that slightly underripe youthful look—features out of a painting, lively, beautiful, stubborn, and strong. Perhaps Hu Bugui didn’t really understand Su Qing. During their brief encounter and lengthy separation, he had only ever seen Su Qing’s merits. And these imagined merits had slowly fermented over the course of three long years of pursuit and deep-rooted guilt, creating an almost illusory image. 

Su Qing may not have thoroughly studied anything else while following Ji Pengcheng, but he had successfully studied how to read people’s expressions. He noticed at once that Hu Bugui’s eyes had shifted away from his face and understood that whatever he had suspected, he was hesitating now. So he redoubled his efforts. Pretending not to notice that Hu Bugui was backing away, he deliberately drew another step closer and lowered his voice ever further. “Is he a drug dealer, murderer, or…heh-heh, you know, the rather shameless kind of offender…” 

Before he had finished this sentence, Hu Bugui stiffly gave him a perfunctory “I have something to see to” and hurriedly left. 

Su Qing waved behind him. “Hey, don’t go, I wasn’t done talking!” Seeing Hu Bugui speed up when he heard this, he put on a regretful expression. Continuing to shake his head and click his tongue, he returned to his seat, turned to a server, and began to yell stridently: “Hey, what’s up with your service here? Why hasn’t the soup I ordered been brought out yet? I’m in a hurry, you know!” 

“I’m sorry, sir, because there was just…” 

“I don’t want to hear excuses. Get me your manager. I’m not like you people, you understand? Do you know how much money you’re losing me by holding me up for just one minute?” 

When Hu Bugui reached the door, he could still hear the man’s unsatisfied voice cursing and scolding. He paused slightly at the door and finally shut the reflective device in his hand and stuffed it back into his pocket—if this person had only been pretending, then under ordinary circumstances he would have relaxed when Hu Bugui had turned his back on him to leave. A different expression would have appeared on his face. 

But it hadn’t happened. If… Then his performance was flawless. 

If a person wants to be invisible in the art of trickery, he must first trick himself. 

Su Qing understood this very well, so when he was “Li Meng,” he wouldn’t use another person’s body language. At the same time, he also knew that Hu Bugui was a very attentive person. He was attentive in taking care of people, and attentive in carrying out a mission. Though he had been sent running by the fumes, as long as there was still a trace of suspicion in his mind, he would leave someone behind to keep watch. 

Su Qing played the game up to the hilt, not sparing any efforts. At last, when the restaurant’s owner finally appeared to intervene, he ate his meal for free and left satisfied. 

He had chosen his timing perfectly, leaving right on the heels of the man who had been eating in the corner. 

The man who had been sitting in the corner looked around thirty, with a crewcut and a forgettable ordinary face. He was wearing an equally ordinary outfit of a white shirt and slacks. Blending into the crowd, he was a drop of water. 

He noticed the man who left right after him—the fuss Su Qing had made to get his free meal had been so noticeable that no one in the restaurant could help hearing it. 

Because of his special identity, the crewcut was always wary of people who approached him, whether deliberately or not. As he walked, he used all kinds of things to observe the man who walked behind him for a time. Luckily, after only two red lights, the man made a phone call and walked impatiently into a big store. 

The crewcut breathed a sigh of relief and continued walking towards the place he had arranged with his companions. Ten minutes later, his nerves tensed again, because a filthy tramp suddenly rolled up at his feet. From the look on his face, he probably wasn’t all there. Smiling and drooling, he mumbled, “Give a little, give a little.” 

The crewcut frowned, planning to go around him, but the tramp followed him, persistently muttering, “Give a little, give a little.” He even reached out a grimy paw to grab his pant leg. 

The crewcut got annoyed and extended a leg to kick him away. “Move, get out of my way.” 

The tramp didn’t dare to pester him any more, curling up by the wall. Sobbing sounds came from his throat, and he trembled as he watched the crewcut walk away from him. 

After a while, the tramp stood up and walked down the street, still stupid and crazy, waving his arms and singing some incomprehensible Martian song with occasionally a quiet “Move, get out of my way” mixed in. Pedestrians avoided him as they walked, assuming he was only having a fit. No one noticed that after repeating this sentence three or four times, his voice was exactly the same as the crewcut’s. 

After shaking off the tramp, the crewcut sped up. A faint bad feeling rose in his heart. The sky gradually darkened, and the streetlamps lit up one by one. He quickly walked a whole block, passing without leave through a park in the city center. He bought a cup of warm orange juice and a newspaper, then sat on a stone bench in the depths of some manmade woods, drinking and reading, pretending to be carefree and content. But if you examined him closely, you would find that the surface of the orange juice in his hand was uneven. 

He sat there long enough to go through the whole thick newspaper. It was already deep night, and stars covered the sky. The visitors strolling through the park had all gone home, never mind in his remote location. 

The crewcut confirmed one final time that there was no one around, then bent down and pulled a silver cellphone out from under the seat. He opened the cover, put a call through, then opened his mouth and said, “I’ve arrived…” 

His voice came to an abrupt halt—the power indicator on the altered cellphone suddenly began to spin wildly, practically like an electric fan. 

Before the crewcut could work out the source of the danger, he blacked out and knew nothing more. 

Su Qing, having gone from vulgar uncle to tramp, had once again resumed his “young genius” appearance from the plane. The moment the phone fell, he scooped it up, looked down at the crewcut, whom he had knocked out, and brought a tiny recording device close to the speaker with his other hand. “I ran into some trouble on the way. It’s been resolved.” 

The imitated voice sounded extremely like the original. 

The person on the phone said, “What happened?” 

Su Qing considered, then ambivalently said, “He…was too easily caught.” 

The answer came: “No problem, he doesn’t know anything. He’s already lost his mind. As expected, the blue seals do in fact have a limit. This life form is still imperfect.” 

Su Qing laughed. “I think this life form’s imperfections aren’t only in this aspect, eh?” 

“True enough—be careful. Number 3’s death has been reported. This is very delicate. It seems that the RZ Unit’s recent operations have been running wild.” 

Su Qing realized at once that “Number 3” must mean Zhao Yifei. So he took a breath and quietly asked, “What do you think…is the right next step to take?” 

The other side was a little surprised. “What’s wrong, 6086? Why would you suddenly ask such a question?” 

As soon as Su Qing heard this form of address and this tone, he immediately understood that this Utopia member was only an errand boy. He didn’t have the authority to question the “higher powers.” So he softened his voice. “I just have a bad feeling. Maybe it’s that there are too many of the RZ Unit’s people. I’m feeling a little stressed.” 

“No need for you to overthink it. Come back and assist in taking care of Number 4. It will be hard to act over there, but he’s much more important than Number 3. No matter what, he can’t be allowed to live, you understand? Leave the experiment for now.” 

Su Qing paused for a moment, then hesitantly said, “…OK.” 

Then he hung up the phone, lowered his head, and looked expressionlessly at the Utopia member he had knocked out. He bent over, pulled a palm-length dagger from his pant leg, slowly squatted down, and brought the blade up to the crewcut’s neck. 

In that instant, no one knew what he was thinking under his calm, unruffled expression. 

After a long moment, Su Qing sighed, put the dagger away, then stripped off the Utopia member’s clothes, searched him several times, confiscated all the assorted instruments scattered on him, confirmed that there was no danger, then tied him up, naked. 

Then he pulled out a crumpled napkin, drew a route map on it, and wrapped up the recorder and the phone he had seized. 

The next day, these things were delivered by a little boy around ten years old into the hands of the young lady still pretending to hand out flyers. Su Qing himself, meanwhile, had boarded a plane and left that same night—he thought he knew who “Number 4” was.