Daomu Biji: The Southern Archives

Song Chai was a Southern Archives field agent. He was just like me. But he went missing while he was working and investigating the plague on this ship.

Zhang Haiyan searched for the full roster of passengers and started to read through it once he found it. He deliberately looked for the rooms where guests didn’t consume any drinks when the waiters went to replenish them, because this meant that there weren’t any passengers in them. 

He found nineteen rooms where the guests didn’t need the waiters to replenish their drinks for a long time. Zhang Haiyan’s heart was filled with numerous doubts, but there were goosebumps all over his body. At least half of the passengers in the nineteen rooms had the surname Zhang.

He copied the room numbers, took the keys hanging in the sailors’ room, walked past those sailors who were making their rounds, and went directly into several of the rooms he had copied down. No one was in the rooms and they were very tidy, as if nobody had ever stayed there.

He stood inside one of the rooms and saw a fly buzzing by. When it stopped on a piece of felt, he walked over and touched the material.

There was blood on it.

This was why Song Chai was catching flies. He had been looking for blood stains. There had been a fierce fight in the room, and someone was seriously injured.

Zhang Ruipu’s surname was also Zhang. People from the Southern Archives had been trying to kill him, which meant that he had some connection to them. As a result, he had Zhang Haiyan get on the ship instead of doing it himself. The Nan’an was a battlefield.

Spreading the plague was a way to attack all the Southern Archives’ field agents in Malacca. There were nineteen agents in the first-class cabin, but it was difficult to say how many were in the third-class cabin.

He had investigated the Flower Reef, plague ship, and Wudou disease case under the Southern Archives’ supervision. Between the plague in Penang and the Nepenthes Nan’an, most of the Southern Archives’ field agents who lived in Malacca had probably been killed. Was this revenge for destroying Flower Reef?

Who was behind this? Who would use such a serious plague to avenge an organization?

Zhang Haiyan sat on the sofa in the empty room, his mind a mess. Zhang Ruipu knew that this was a trap, but he still made me get on the ship. Was it simply because he wanted me to investigate the case?

Impossible. His purpose was to make these killers think that I’m him, because everyone from the Southern Archives used a pseudonym when boarding the ship. In other words, that bastard Zhang Ruipu wanted me to get on the ship and die for him. He had no intention of letting me get off the ship.

What about the deal? What about Zhang Haixia, who's still a hostage? If there’s no transaction at all, what will happen to him?

“I’m going to make this ship turn around.” Zhang Haiyan said as he looked at the vast ocean outside.

He Jianxi didn’t even try to hide at all. He squatted on the ground for a long time and looked at the corpse whose neck had been crushed. He thought of numerous possibilities, but none of them could explain why he appeared on the ship, and why there were so many corpses when he showed up.

Zhang Haiyan returned. The bodies in the infirmary would soon be discovered, and there was no way they would be able to explain what was going on. Moreover, the ship’s security would tighten if people found out about the murders, which would make his plan even more difficult.

He carried the doctors’ and policemen’s corpses on his back and then threw them into the sea, along with all the gas cylinders. Then, he picked up the body of the last killer and said, “Follow me, He Jianxi.”

“Where to?”

“The situation has changed.” Zhang Haiyan lit a cigarette. Now he had two goals: kill the nepenthes killers and hijack the ship so he could return to Malacca.

“Let’s catch the bad guys,” Zhang Haiyan said, while silently adding, and then we’ll hijack the ship.