No one in the rental apartment noticed that after Chen Ge's shadow absorbed the bloodstains on the clay figurine, it began to slowly change shape, as if a sleeping woman were gently turning over in her dream.
"Get some rest. See you tomorrow." Chen Ge glanced at the clock on the wall. It was two in the morning.
He left the rental apartment. Instead of returning to New Century Park, he hailed a taxi and headed straight for the Old Town.
The dim yellow glow of the streetlights fell across him through the car window. Chen Ge watched the quiet city and tugged his collar tighter.
The Old Town was very different at night. There were no lights to be seen and no sounds to be heard. As Han Jiang continued to develop, fewer and fewer people lived here. Most had moved to the new district.
He crossed the pitch-black streets and found the place where Wu Jinpeng had once rented a room in barely ten minutes.
The rental apartment was two streets away from Fan Yu's home. The surroundings were worse here, and the stench in the air was even stronger.
"How have they managed to live here all this time? Am I the only one who can smell this stench?" Chen Ge recalled coming here during the day to look for Jiang Ming's mother. Whether they had grown used to it or for some other reason, Neighborhood Committee Sister and Jiang Ming's mother seemed unable to smell the strange stench in the air at all.
Leaving the alley, Chen Ge held onto a rusty railing as he climbed to the second floor of an old building. He looked into the distance. This wasn't even the most remote, dilapidated part of the Old Town.
"204... Found it. This is