Qiong's Investigation Results

Fan Ning stood at the shooting range, removed the three remaining rounds from the revolver's cylinder, and temporarily stowed them in the buffalo-leather cartridge pouch at his side.

He decided that whenever he practiced with a gun each day, he would begin with loading the cylinder and aiming, using only a small portion of his time for shooting.

Once he had mastered loading and aiming in every situation, he would gradually increase the proportion of time spent practicing shooting.

"Besides the weekly quota of twenty rounds, each additional bullet costs four pence—the price of a meal from a street stall, and a generously portioned one at that. Take it easy."

He pressed open the retaining latch, flicked out the cylinder, loaded the bullets, pressed them into the chambers, and pulled back the hammer...

He raised his arm, steadied it, lowered it, flicked out the cylinder, dumped the bullets, and loaded it again...

He deliberately slowed down the individual movements instead of focusing on the speed of each separate action, pursuing an even overall pace and fluid movements.

Through repeated, unhurried practice that left him time to think, he familiarized his fingers with the relative positions of each component, carefully experiencing their textures and the coordination of both hands.

His attitude was much like that of a pianist seriously practicing a piece at a slow tempo.

To ordinary people, the movements would have seemed unbearably dull. Standing before the target, Fan Ning repeated the first round of exercises for half an hour.

After sitting down to rest for a while and shaking his sore, swollen arm, he continued practicing loading the cylinder slowly.

Once he had become fairly proficient at loading while standing, Fan Ning tried loading while walking, while sitting, while lying on the floor, and even while looking into the distance and using only his peripheral vision.

He deliberately kept his speed low, repeatedly savoring the sensations in his hands.

It was similar to the early stages of practicing a difficult, fast piano piece. He was in no hurry to increase his speed.

In the empty fourth-floor shooting range, the sounds of mechanical impacts and friction rang out without pause.

After an hour, Fan Ning had become much more familiar with the feel of the revolver.

At the end, he also tried shooting a dozen or so times. Relying on the powerful Inspiration of a Knower, he gradually adjusted his condition, and his score on the ten-meter target had reached a range of three to six rings.

He returned to the second floor and opened the door to Office 209, immediately feeling his eyes light up.

As expected of a Knower's office...

The conditions here were even slightly better than those in DuPont's room.

The office covered about twenty square meters. Parts of the gas-heating and lighting pipes were exposed along the walls. It had a private washroom, a complete set of desks, chairs, and cabinets, a fabric sofa long enough to lie across, and a tea table and tea set inlaid with dark-green embossed leather.

What pleased him most was that the office also contained a brown upright piano made by "Ctesibius," the same brand as the one in Hiran's home. Hers, however, was a far more expensive seven-foot grand piano.

This model was also considered high-end among upright pianos, with a market price of roughly forty to fifty pounds. Compared with the old, shabby little piano in his bedroom at home, it was on an entirely different level.

Fan Ning tried playing a few short pieces and found he quite liked its touch.

Then he found a stack of fresh printed staff paper beneath the piano bench lid and sat down at the desk.

The desktop was made from a single slab of figured walnut burl, decorated with openwork tin latticework. Beneath it were several small drawers with delicate, attractive lines.

For the rest of the afternoon, he recalled the music while transcribing Chopin's "Fantasy Impromptu" piano score onto the paper.

During that time, the elderly woman on front-desk duty knocked to ask about his meal order. Given the choice between the food downstairs and the boxed-meal shop next door, Fan Ning chose the latter—the choice most colleagues made most of the time.

After that, Vimod, the young man in charge of finance and logistics, knocked on his door once more.

He brought Fan Ning a brand-new men's double-compartment briefcase, made of gleaming cowhide.

He also brought four gold pounds in crisp new banknotes. The young man explained that because Fan Ning had joined the Guidance School at the end of the month, he would receive half a month's salary in November.

In the printing room, the clumsy steam-powered rotary press clattered noisily, slowly spitting out engraved writing paper printed with "Fantasy Impromptu."

Fan Ning gathered the various small items he needed and walked back to his apartment on nearby Lunwan Avenue.

He changed into a clean formal suit for later use. As for house clothes, there were plenty of them in Teacher Anton's own permanent guest room.

He then hid the revolver holster at his waist, put on his black silk top hat, carried the leather briefcase, and went out with his rosewood cane.

"I look a little like one of those gentlemen who need to go in and out of Parliament all the time."

Standing before the full-length mirror at the entrance of a clothing shop, Fan Ning made this quip.

He arrived at the gates of Saint Leniya University at around five in the afternoon.

The Faculty of History and Literature consisted of four adjoining buildings in a folded mansard style. Silver and gray formed the main colors, while carved relief cornerstones and eaves joined together to create angular lines and fine details, giving the complex a strong classical-revival air.

Fan Ning entered through the main gate, its surroundings thick with climbing vines. Recalling the conversation among the three of them over lunch the previous day, he compared the various signs and searched for the classroom where Qiong's major class was being held that day.

"It feels like there are even more women here than at the Conservatory..."

It was dismissal time, and students streamed out in groups. The corridors and staircases of these buildings were much narrower than those at the university in Fan Ning's previous life. Going against the flow alone, Fan Ning nearly knocked off his top hat several times.

As he slowly squeezed past a corner on one floor, still lamenting how difficult it was to find someone in this world without mobile phones—

"Bang!"

A nimble figure hurrying along collided solidly with his chest, bringing with it a chaotic yet sweet fragrance.

"Ah—" a girl cried out softly.

Quite a few passing students immediately slowed down and turned to watch.

The black silk top hat and the white women's soft hat fell to the floor together. Fan Ning hastily crouched to pick them up, then handed the still-warm soft hat back to its owner.

The girl opposite him wore an informal aqua cashmere coat, with a boat-neck blouse and a light-colored pleated skirt underneath.

"Qiong, why were you running so fast?" Fan Ning asked with an exasperated laugh after getting a clear look at her delicate, petite face.

Qiong rubbed her smooth forehead with one hand. Her voice was as cheerful and lively as ever. "I was just about to look for you. I got out of class five minutes late today, and I was afraid you'd already finished and left the Conservatory."

Fan Ning asked doubtfully, "I don't have class today. We clearly said I had class tomorrow."

Qiong stuck out her tongue. "Oh, then I remembered wrong."

Fan Ning swallowed his frustration. "...What are we eating tonight?"

"Come on. Let's go to your Conservatory first. There's been progress in the investigation you asked me to conduct, and I need to confirm something with you."

Qiong led the way without stopping. Looking back at Fan Ning, her eyes held a hint of smugness as she urged him to hurry and catch up.

"That fast? What do you need to confirm?" Seeing that the satchel in Qiong's hand seemed stuffed to the brim, Fan Ning suddenly felt that he could no longer see through her.

"You previously asked me about Nora Carr, the senior student from our faculty who died. My investigation found that she knew Vulkan Harvey, the deceased from your faculty."

"That's strange. They were acquaintances?" Fan Ning said.

Even though he was now a Third-Rank Knower, thinking of how one of them had sewn shut her own eyes, mouth, and nose while the other had crawled into a piano to die still made him shudder.

"The two of them knew each other because they were lovers," Qiong said.

"Huh?"

"The underground-romance kind."

"You were able to investigate even that?"

"Of course." The corners of Qiong's petite mouth curved up slightly as she said with a beaming smile, "If you don't believe me, try starting an underground romance. I can investigate it for you in minutes."

"Don't. That scares me." Fan Ning coughed awkwardly twice. "So what happened afterward?"

"Afterward, because you told me about what happened to you that night, I focused on investigating their recent movements to see whether they had encountered a similar scene. And as it turned out, they had."

"What?"

"Our faculty has recently been holding a choral competition with several other faculties. The night before the incident, the choir borrowed Chamber Hall No. 4 in your faculty for a rehearsal. Do you know the place?"

"Of course. It's directly beneath Hall No. 1, where I had class last Friday."

Saint Leniya Conservatory had fairly abundant performance facilities. There were six small chamber halls alone, each with seating for a hundred spectators.

Halls No. 1, 2, and 3 were teaching venues belonging to the Conservatory and normally not open to the public.

Halls No. 4, 5, and 6 were activity venues, freely accessible to students and faculty throughout the university. Naturally, lengthy rehearsals or performances still required advance reservations.

"Nora was a language and vocal-music enthusiast. She served as the lead soprano of the Faculty of History and Literature Choir. Her boyfriend—Vulkan, the senior student from the Conservatory—had been invited over to serve as the artistic director and piano accompanist at that night's rehearsal," Qiong continued.

Fan Ning matched this against the timeline in his memory.

Thursday afternoon last week: the final discussion of The Remnant of the Musical Scale at Teacher Anton's home.

Thursday evening last week: the Faculty of History and Literature Choir rehearsed in Hall No. 4.

Friday daytime last week: the two of them died one after another.

Friday evening last week: the Conservatory's open class in Hall No. 1; the original owner saw Teacher Anton for the last time, then remained afterward to discuss ancient musical materials. Fan Ning crossed over from a chamber-music concert in his previous life, saw two human-shaped silhouettes on the stage, and shortly afterward, Teacher Anton shot himself at home.

"That's very important information." Fan Ning gave a slight nod.

The police had of course investigated the victims' movements beforehand, but after combining that with his testimony, their attention had probably focused mainly on the "gathering" that Thursday afternoon.

As a result, they had concluded that The Remnant of the Musical Scale was the direct cause of the series of incidents, and the item had subsequently been confiscated by the Special Inspection Office.

Then what about these two similar chamber-hall scenes?

"So what happened during the rehearsal in Hall No. 4 that Thursday evening was also important," Fan Ning said.

"Exactly. Very good." Qiong cheerfully praised Fan Ning. "Can you take me there now?"