Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The second floor of the old cremation building used to be the equipment room.

After Liang Boyan rushed in, he immediately unscrewed an abandoned oil drum in the corner.

The pungent smell of gasoline filled the air instantly.

“He’s going to start a fire!” Zou Jiashu cursed, lunging after him.

Gao Yanzhou was faster, pouncing forward to pin Liang Boyan to the ground. Liang Boyan’s eyes were bloodshot with desperation; he pulled a folding knife from his sleeve with a flick of his wrist and stabbed straight toward Gao Yanzhou’s shoulder.

I screamed.

Gao Yanzhou twisted his body to dodge, but the tip of the blade still sliced his arm. Blood quickly began to soak down his sleeve, mixing with the rainwater.

Zou Jiashu kicked the knife away and pressed his gun against Liang Boyan, shouting sternly, “Don’t move!”

Liang Boyan gasped for air, then suddenly laughed.

He looked at me, his expression bordering on madness. “Li Yuxi, do you think everything will be wiped clean just because Gao Yanzhou is back? I was the one who signed for your father’s transport truck, but the final handover slip bears your father’s thumbprint. You and your father have been tied to this line since six years ago.”

“Shut up!” Gao Yanzhou smashed a fist into his face.

Liang Boyan’s head snapped to the side from the blow, blood immediately appearing at the corner of his mouth, yet he continued to stare at me with a grin.

“He didn’t tell you, did he? Before the dock explosion three years ago, he actually came back once.” Liang Boyan’s voice was hoarse. “He stood at the street corner opposite the funeral home, watching you work overtime until ten at night. In the end, he didn’t dare come over. Because he knew that the moment he showed his face, you would die even faster than your father did.”

I froze in place.

Gao Yanzhou’s movements faltered for a fraction of a second.

Knowing he had struck a nerve, Liang Boyan laughed even harder. “He thought pushing you away was protecting you. But look at you now-you were dragged in anyway.”

“Yes,” I said suddenly, my voice eerily flat. “But if you people hadn’t burned my father to death and pushed Gao Yanzhou to this point, I would never have had to know any of this.”

Liang Boyan was stunned for a moment.

I walked toward him step by step, looking him in the eye. “You said you protected me for six years. But you taught me how to identify bones, repair skin, and sew stitches not so I could have a livelihood, but so that even if I saw something wrong in the future, I would choose to believe you first.”

“You treated me as your insurance policy long ago.”

“Now, that insurance is useless.”

Liang Boyan’s expression finally changed.

Sirens suddenly wailed outside the building.

Zou Jiashu had activated his location tracker to call for backup before coming upstairs, and the support had now arrived. Liang Boyan clearly heard it too. He violently broke free from Gao Yanzhou’s grip and lunged toward the oil drum. A lighter flicked to life with a snap.

“Then nobody gets anything!”

The flames roared up instantly.

Gasoline burned a path along the floor toward the door. The old wooden door and cardboard boxes were ignited in a flash, and a wave of heat surged through the second floor.

Zou Jiashu cursed and rushed forward to stop him, but Liang Boyan retreated toward the window like a madman, vanishing behind billowing clouds of black smoke in an instant.

“Downstairs, now!” Gao Yanzhou grabbed my wrist.

I stumbled as he pulled me, but as I turned, I saw the black notebook on the floor.

It contained my father’s photos and the records of that transport truck from six years ago.

That was the only thing left that could clear my father’s name.

I violently shook off Gao Yanzhou’s hand. “The notebook!”

“Forget it!”

“I can’t!”

The fire had already reached the equipment racks, and the old sprinkler system at the top didn’t react at all. The black smoke grew thicker and thicker; I coughed until tears came to my eyes, yet I still rushed back to grab the notebook.

In the next second, there was a loud boom from above as a charred wooden beam fell straight down.

I didn’t have time to dodge.

Gao Yanzhou lunged over, pulling me into his arms to shield me.

The beam grazed his back and smashed heavily onto the ground, sending sparks flying everywhere. I was pressed into the corner by him, the sound of the raging fire exploding in my ears.

His breathing was ragged as he looked down at me, his eyes still as dark as they were three years ago.

“Li Yuxi,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Are you trying to scare me to death?”

I looked at him with reddened eyes, my mind a mess.

“You’ve been dead for three years. You’re still afraid of being scared?”

Gao Yanzhou froze for a moment, then actually let out a frustrated laugh at my remark.

The firelight reflected off his face; he looked a complete mess, yet I felt this was the most handsome he had looked in all these three years.

Protecting me with one hand, he reached down with the other to scoop up the notebook and tucked it into my arms.

“Hold onto it tight,” he said.

“Don’t let go this time.”

People were already rushing up from downstairs shouting for us. Zou Jiashu was outside covering his nose and mouth, cursing at us to get the hell out. Gao Yanzhou shielded me as we crouched and ran out. When we reached the stairwell, I heard a loud shatter behind us as the entire row of windows on the second floor exploded.

A wave of heat rolled over us, and tongues of fire nearly licked our backs.

When we finally burst out of the building’s entrance, my legs gave way, and I collapsed onto the rainy ground.

It was raining heavily.

Gao Yanzhou knelt down beside me, reaching out to touch my face, but his hand stopped just before reaching me, as if he were afraid of startling me.

I looked at him and suddenly slapped him across the face.
It wasn’t a heavy blow.

But the moment my hand landed on him, my tears fell too.

“Gao Yanzhou, you bastard.”

He took it fully, neither dodging nor talking back.

I was crying so hard I was practically shaking. “Do you have any idea how I’ve lived these past three years? With just one sentence-‘don’t get married’-you threw me away. Later, everyone said you were dead. I couldn’t even mourn you properly because I always felt you weren’t really gone. But I couldn’t find you anywhere. Gao Yanzhou, I’ve hated you for three years, and I’ve waited for you for three years.”

Rainwater streamed down his jaw.

He looked at me, his eyes slowly turning red.

“I know,” he said.

“You don’t know.” My voice was choked with sobs. “If you knew, you wouldn’t have let me identify your body with my own hands.”

Gao Yanzhou’s Adam’s apple bobbed, as if he had a thousand words trapped in his throat.

Finally, he whispered, “I didn’t arrange for that body.”

I froze.

“They knew I was still alive and wanted to wrap things up early,” he said. “After the pier explosion three years ago, I really couldn’t go back. There was a mole in the Municipal Bureau, and the funeral home was compromised too. The moment I showed my face, they would have followed me to find you. That scheduled email… I set it in advance because I was afraid the worst would happen.”

“Then why didn’t you contact me?”

“I did.” His voice was very low. “During the first year, I spent three nights downstairs at your apartment. In the second year, when you were hospitalized with a fever, I had someone deliver medicine to your ward. In the third year…”

He paused, looking at me as if he had finally made up his mind.

“In the third year, I originally planned to come back and marry you once the operation was over.”

My tears fell even harder.

“But I found out your father’s car accident wasn’t an accident, and I also found out Liang Boyan had been watching you. I didn’t dare gamble.” Gao Yanzhou raised his hand, finally gently wiping the water from my face. “Yuxi, I’m not as noble as you think. I was scared too. Scared that as soon as I got close to you, something would happen to you.”

“So you’d rather let me think you didn’t want me anymore?”

“That’s still better than letting you die with me.”

I stared at him intently. The resentment I had suppressed for three years seemed to have finally found an outlet.

But behind that outlet, it wasn’t empty.

It was him.

It was a man who was clearly covered in scars yet was still clumsily trying to push me away.

Suddenly, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything harsher.

The lights of ambulances and police cars flashed together in the rain. Zou Jiashu was helped out of the building, and his first words were still a curse at Gao Yanzhou: “If you’d been five minutes later, I’d have had to collect your real corpse, you bastard!”

Gao Yanzhou ignored him, his eyes fixed only on me.

I had been clutching the ring I took from the chest of the fake corpse this whole time; by now, it had left a deep indentation in my palm.

I opened my hand and held the ring out before his eyes.

“What about this?”

When Gao Yanzhou saw it, his expression changed instantly.

“How did they get their hands on this?”

“You’re asking me?”

He fell silent for a moment. Suddenly, as if remembering something, his face darkened violently.

“They didn’t take it,” he said. “I gave it away.”

I was stunned.

“Two months ago, one of my informants was targeted. He had a similar build to mine. I gave him the ring and my ID to use as bait, originally just wanting to lure Liang Boyan out.” Gao Yanzhou’s voice was raspy. “I didn’t expect them to burn him alive and deliver him straight to you.”

Only then did I understand why that fake corpse had appeared at the funeral home, right in front of me.

It was a warning from Yuan Sinian and Liang Boyan to Gao Yanzhou.

And to me.

They wanted me to personally confirm Gao Yanzhou’s death, and then personally turn the matter to ash.

Unfortunately for them, they hadn’t accounted for the missing piece of Gao Yanzhou’s finger bone.

They also hadn’t accounted for the fact that I, standing at the restoration table, could tell the difference with a single touch.

What followed was resolved faster than I had imagined.

Liang Boyan didn’t escape; the perimeter of the old cremation building had long been sealed off by reinforcements. Yuan Sinian was also taken into custody that same night. The recordings, ledgers, and memory cards Gao Yanzhou had painstakingly gathered over three years, combined with the old records of my father’s car, finally pulled the entire thread together-a six-year-old conspiracy that used fires, the funeral home, and cremation procedures to destroy evidence and bodies.

My father’s death was no longer labeled as “faulty wiring.”

It was intentional homicide.

Those people who had once been registered as “unidentified corpses” regained their names one by one.

On the day the case was transferred to the procuratorate, I sat at the entrance of the Municipal Bureau for a long time, holding that notebook with its heat-curled edges.

When Gao Yanzhou finished the paperwork and came out, his footsteps faltered when he saw me.

Three years had passed. He was thinner than before, and his shoulders were set more rigidly, but the way he looked at me hadn’t changed.

He stood on the steps, looking as if he didn’t know whether he should approach.

But I suddenly thought back to a long time ago.

I remembered the first time I took a fire-damage restoration case. I had been vomiting uncontrollably, and Gao Yanzhou had carried me out of the restoration room on his back, then crouched by the door to buy me hot soy milk.

I told him the job seemed too unlucky.

He said it wasn’t a curse, but a matter of dignity. Everyone has to go on their final journey; by restoring their faces, you are keeping a lamp lit for those left behind.
I should have known back then that this man saw things differently from everyone else.

It wasn’t that he didn’t love me.

He was just never very good at expressing that love in a way that didn’t hurt.

“Li Yuxi,” he finally spoke. “If you still want to hit me, I’ll stand right here and won’t move.”

I looked up at him and couldn’t help but let out a small laugh, though my tears fell right along with it.

“Gao Yanzhou,” I asked. “That thing you said three years ago-‘If that’s what you want to think’-what did you actually mean by that?”

He fell silent for a moment, then stepped down the stairs to stand directly in front of me.

“It meant that if I had to choose between ‘losing you’ and ‘having you hate me,’ I’d rather you hate me.”

“And now?”

“Now…” He looked down at me, his voice trembling slightly. “Now that the case is almost closed, I want to ask you one more time.”

He pulled a small evidence bag out of his pocket.

Inside was another ring.

It was a bit older than the one in my hand, with worn edges, but the inside of the band was clearly engraved with three letters.

LYX.

Li Yuxi.

“You kept mine too?” I was stunned.

“From the day you fished it out, I knew you would keep yours,” he said softly. “So I didn’t throw mine away either.”

The wind blew past the entrance of the Municipal Bureau, making the evidence bag sway gently.

I looked at him, and suddenly, I remembered that night.

I had originally gone there to collect my fiancé’s corpse.

In the end, what I brought back wasn’t a body.

It was a truth that had been delayed for three years, and a man who was clearly covered in scars but had still walked back to me, step by step.

I reached out and placed my own ring into his palm.

“Gao Yanzhou.”

“Yeah.”

“If you leave me behind again this time, I really will be the one collecting your body.”

The tension that had been tightly coiled in his eyes finally, slowly, began to relax.

“I won’t,” he said.

“Even if I really die this time, I’ll make sure it happens after you’re gone first.”

I almost wanted to hit him again.

But in the next second, he reached out and pulled me into his arms.

He held me tight, with such force, as if he finally dared to confirm that I was truly still here.

I leaned against his shoulder, smelling the faint scent of disinfectant, tobacco, and the dampness of someone who had been through wind and rain. The smell wasn’t pleasant at all, but it was a scent I hadn’t smelled in three years.

So I closed my eyes and reached out to hold him even tighter.

Later, the case was settled, and both Yuan Sinian and Liang Boyan were sent to prison. My father’s case file was re-archived, and his cause of death was changed to “murdered in retaliation for reporting a crime.” On my way home with that correction notice, I stood under a bus stop sign and cried for a long time.

It wasn’t out of grievance.

It was because the wait was finally over.

Gao Yanzhou didn’t leave the city again.

He spent two months recovering from his injuries. Before officially returning to the force, he liked to come to the entrance of the funeral home to pick me up from work. At first, my colleagues looked at him like they were seeing a ghost, but eventually, they got used to it. Even Xiao Wu would shout at him while taking off his mask, “Captain Gao, Teacher Li isn’t working overtime today. You can stop standing there like a ‘wife-watching stone.'”

His skin had grown quite thick; he would actually nod and say, “Thanks for the reminder.”

Only I knew that it wasn’t that he was thick-skinned.

It was just that after regaining what he had lost, he never wanted to hide it again.

Later on, I made a copy of the old notebook and the recordings left behind from that night at the Old Crematorium Building in the South City. I locked them in a drawer at home along with that blackened silver ring.

It wasn’t to commemorate death.

It was to commemorate the three years of my life that felt the most like being dead.

And it was to commemorate the person I had almost personally sent into the cremation furnace, who had, in the end, walked back alive.

The wedding was set for the following spring.

On the day Gao Yanzhou came to take me to try on wedding dresses, he suddenly pulled a small box out from the passenger seat.

I opened it. Inside lay two new rings.

They were plain silver and very simple in design, but the insides were still engraved with those two terribly cliché sets of initials.

GYZ, LYX.

I looked at them and started to laugh. “Why did you still have these engraved?”

“I’m afraid of losing them again,” he said. “Engraving them deeper makes them easier to identify.”

I huffed. “You’d better not give me the chance to identify your body for the rest of your life.”

Gao Yanzhou turned his head to look at me, a faint, long-absent smile in his eyes.

“I won’t.”

“In the future, even if I really have to go to the funeral home, I’ll have to walk in there myself to find you.”

I scolded him for being unlucky, but I didn’t let go of his hand.

Outside the car window, spring had just arrived, and the plane trees in the city were beginning to sprout new leaves.

I suddenly thought back to that most desperate night three years ago.

If someone had told me then that one day I would identify a fake corpse at a funeral home restoration table, that I would follow a scheduled email to snatch Gao Yanzhou back from the list of the dead, that I would clear my father’s name, and that I would put a ring back on my finger… I probably wouldn’t have believed a single word.

But life is just like that sometimes.

You think you’re going to collect a body, but in the end, you bring back both love and the truth.

And the thing I am most grateful for in this life is that on the night I went to collect my fiancé’s corpse, I didn’t misidentify him.