Deadly Scale

Gu Yanqing, a professor of vocal music at Lancheng University and a famous baritone singer, was found dead in a soundproof piano room. The cause of death was mechanical asphyxia - someone inserted a piece of wet handmade rice paper into his mouth. The paper expanded after absorbing water and closed tightly like a cork. There were no signs of struggle at the scene, no third-party fingerprints, and the doors and windows were intact. There is only a metal bookmark in the shape of a treble clef placed on the top cover of the piano, with the same word - "Quiet" engraved on the back in seven languages. There is a musical score handwritten on rice paper. The copy of the aria "La Fiende" from Verdi's opera Rigoletto stopped abruptly at B flat in the high register of the third bar, and the ink broke off on half a note. What's even weirder is that the police found Ye Jia's handwritten music score in an old piano room on the third floor of the music building that had been locked for 25 years. The same melody, the same B flat, interrupted at the same position. The handwriting on the new rice paper stuck in Gu Yanqing's throat exactly matched Ye Jia's old score - but Ye Jia had been dead for twenty-five years. Who, twenty-five years later, used her handwriting, her music scores, her rosin and the bookmarks she personally presented to return to this soundproof room and block the throats of her most proud students? This is a suspenseful novel about sound, silence and revenge. When a singer's throat is blocked by a sheet of music, when a bookmark becomes a signature spanning life and death, when all secrets are sealed in sound-absorbing cotton in a soundproof room - the only thing that can break this silence is the truth.