Chapter Thirty-Nine: Another Photograph

Perhaps the conversation between the two of us was so explosive that even the chubby man, who had been wolfing down his food, paused and took the photos from my hand to examine them. There was no need for me to explain anything to him; combined with Tang Renjie’s words and those two photos, he immediately understood the situation.

“Wow, is it really such a coincidence?” he exclaimed in surprise.

“Which aspect do you find coincidental, chubby?” Tang Renjie asked, looking at him.

“All of it. It’s so coincidental that it’s hard to believe,” he replied casually, though I caught the hint in his words—he was warning me not to trust Tang Renjie too much.

In truth, I didn’t need him to tell me this, but Tang Renjie’s words and those two photos had already left me completely stunned.

“This is the reality.” Tang Renjie sighed, stood up, walked over to my side, and pulled up a chair to sit next to me. “After I learned of your father’s death, especially the date he died, I was troubled for a long time. The more I thought about it, the more I blamed myself. When your father came to see me on May 13th, as his best friend, I should have noticed something was wrong. Your father was a slow-to-warm-up person—he rarely spoke in front of strangers, but was cheerful among friends, often making everyone laugh. But that day, when he visited me, he barely spoke. I didn’t think much of it then, assuming he was upset about not having his work arranged. I even tried to comfort him. How can I put it? That day, he seemed utterly lost, as if his soul had left him.”

“Work?” I asked, puzzled. My father was a farmer—what work could he have had?

“At the time, the army was arranging for discharged soldiers to be assigned jobs. We were in the same boat—neither of us had been placed anywhere. They told us to wait for further notice, but once things were shelved, it became very difficult to arrange anything,” Tang Renjie explained.

After he finished, he half-reclined in his chair, clearly unhappy. The chubby man and I exchanged glances. He could see that I was deeply shaken and unlikely to think rationally. He had lost any appetite for food and asked Tang Renjie, “So, what are you implying?”

“Tianhua knew, on that day in May, that he was about to die. Though cheerful among friends, he was emotionally reserved. Words like ‘lasting friendship’ might seem ordinary between friends, but I knew him well—he never wrote or said such things, finding them embarrassing. Combined with his behavior that day, I can imagine how he felt. He knew he was going to die, so he wrote those words. It’s those four characters—‘lasting friendship’—that have made it impossible for me to let go of his death,” Tang Renjie said.

“The script doesn’t quite match,” the chubby man suddenly commented.

Not only Tang Renjie, but even I was puzzled by his remark.

“What script?” I asked.

“If we go by what Mr. Tang said, he later became a successful businessman and now is the wealthiest man in Luoyang. Brother Thief’s father was your best friend, so you should have found his family long ago, nurtured Brother Thief, let him live a happy life as a second-generation heir, then have him compete with your biological son for the inheritance. Finally, Brother Thief would voluntarily give up the inheritance, take his beloved girl to a deserted island, and live happily ever after—maybe even meet seven dwarfs along the way,” he said.

I glared at him, “Chubby, what nonsense are you talking about?”

He shrugged, “Did I say anything wrong? Isn’t that how it goes in novels?”

“Stop fooling around,” I told him.

Tang Renjie laughed, “Looks like Chubby doesn’t believe me. Yezi, do you?”

I didn’t know what to say. If it were just Tang Renjie’s story, I wouldn’t trust a businessman I had little regard for. But with these two photos as evidence, I truly didn’t know how to judge. I closed my eyes, and suddenly my brother’s words echoed in my mind: “If you want a lie to be believable, make it seventy percent truth, thirty percent falsehood.”

My intuition told me that most of what Tang Renjie said was true, but some parts were undoubtedly fabricated.

I opened my eyes, “I don’t even have any photos of my father at home, yet you do—how could I not believe you? Please continue.”

“Chubby wasn’t completely wrong, but it’s not that I didn’t try to find you later. Your grandfather refused me and was very wary of my investigation into your father’s death. You can verify this with your uncle. At first, I didn’t understand your grandfather and thought he was cold-hearted, but later I realized he might have been protecting me. So over the years, I wanted to help you, but couldn’t. Eventually, I saw you were managing well on your own and didn’t want to disturb you,” Tang Renjie said.

“So with your abilities, did you find anything?” I asked, looking at him.

“No. I looked for information from the police, but they had no progress. It wasn’t for lack of effort; there simply weren’t any clues—the perpetrator was too cunning. However, I did discover something else, which I think will interest you greatly.” Tang Renjie smiled mysteriously, returned to his seat, and took a brown paper file folder from his briefcase.

I took the folder and opened it. It was fairly large, but contained very little—just a few sheets of paper and one photo. When I saw the photo, I didn’t dare to look closely, because its existence was like irrefutable evidence, and I felt unable to handle something so definitive.

I looked at the paper first. It was a handwritten missing-person notice, possibly originally on red paper—the kind used for festive occasions or invitations, though now faded from age.

The writing was in brush script, neat and tidy. Many people of that era could write with a brush. The content was typical for a missing-person notice:

Missing: Xu Ailing, twenty-one years old, height 1.63 meters, long hair in braids, wearing a red floral cotton jacket, black cotton pants, red cloth shoes; disappeared at the temple fair on March 25. Anyone with information, please provide clues; generous reward offered.

The notice was nothing special, so I put it down and picked up the photo. With just one glance, I tossed it aside.

The photo showed a woman holding a flower, her hair tied in a ponytail.

A black-and-white photograph.

It was clear the woman was delicate and pretty, with the shyness and modesty typical of young women from that era.

Her smile in the photo was pure and innocent.

The reason I was so frightened was because I recognized her. Not many in the village would, but her face had been etched in my memory for twenty years. I knew instantly—it was the “simpleton.”

Chen Stone’s “simpleton” wife.

“Surprised?” Tang Renjie smiled at me.

I nodded, not hiding my shock. Honestly, regardless of the truth behind my father’s connection to Tang Renjie, just seeing this photo and information made the trip worthwhile.

“The woman in the photo wasn’t simple-minded. In those days, if a mentally challenged person went missing, most able-bodied people could barely feed themselves, so it wouldn’t have warranted such a public search. There were no typewriters or copiers then; this notice was entirely handwritten,” Tang Renjie said.

“Not simple-minded? How could that be?!” I exclaimed, startled once more. Although the smile she gave before dying had given me the illusion she wasn’t truly simple, I had only considered it a fleeting thought. How could a woman who was wild, disheveled, and content with a single steamed bun not be simple-minded?

“I knew you’d be surprised,” Tang Renjie laughed.

“The woman was from Nanyang, named Xu Ailing, and disappeared at twenty-one,” he continued.

“That I know. Tell me what I don’t know,” I urged, genuinely anxious this time.

“Let me explain. She was from Sanlitun in Xinye, Nanyang. I later went to the village and met her family. After Xu Ailing disappeared, her mother went mad. Xu Ailing was a well-known girl there, not just for her beauty, but also her skill in needlework. Many people knew about her disappearance, and everyone knew she was taken by someone from Luoyang. According to them, Ailing was abducted by a fortune-teller from Luoyang. That’s why the Luoyang police had this information,” Tang Renjie said.

“What fortune-teller?” I asked, puzzled. Wasn't Chen Stone the one who took her, not a fortune-teller?

“Back then, a fortune-teller visited Xinye. He was accurate in his predictions and charged little—sometimes just a meal. So many sought his services. Xu Ailing also had her fortune told. People there said the fortune-teller was smitten with her beauty and abducted the young maiden,” Tang Renjie explained.