Bureau of Southern Archives

Zhang Haiyan remembers everything. I remember that the blood on the deck of the Nan'an made Hai Xia's feet slippery. I remember how hard Hai Xia squeezed his fingers when he swallowed the fake death pill. I remember what Hai Xia said before the last knife was stabbed into his chest, "I'm a little tired." Then he opened his eyes, and the morning light of July 1916 shone on the knife on the wall. The green and gray cloth strips on the handle were tightly wrapped. Hai Xia was leaning against the door frame with two bowls of porridge. The old scars on his wrists had not faded away yet, and he was still alive. He decided to play chess again. He uprooted Mo Yungao and blocked the dusk grass at the dock. He alone hid all the truth for more than ten years. Every step was calculated and every move was made in advance. But it only took Zhang Haixia one morning to see through him—to see that the speed of checking goods was wrong, to see that he would knit knives and knots when he was nervous, to see that a person died in his dream. "Do you need a deputy in your bureau who can understand how many knots you have made?" Zhang Haiyan thought he was protecting him. He didn't know that the person being protected started to dismantle his game from the first sight.