6. Another Wu Xie

Seeing that a few people had dispersed, Wu Xie signaled to Wang Meng, “Compile all the models and quantities of the cameras for me. Then pull up the data on all the tour groups that have visited here in the past year.”

“A year? That must be quite a lot, right?”

“Be smart about it. The tour groups coming to Gulongjing are likely to be quite unique in terms of scale and itinerary. It won’t be too many,” Wu Xie replied.

Li Cu was huddled at the side, unsure if he could move freely in this matter. After finishing one cigarette, Wu Xie immediately lit another. It was then that he noticed Li Cu still standing nearby and asked, “What’s going on? Haven’t you looked at any of the materials? You seemed clueless just now.”

“You should know I’m not fond of studying.”

“Do you value your life?” Wu Xie asked him. “If it’s still like this tomorrow, I won’t be polite with you. Do you think I’m too easygoing or something? As a potential hostage, a piece of meat, you’re our food in tough times. Can’t you at least have some awareness and value? So that when we’re starving, we can find a reason not to eat you?”

Looking into Wu Xie’s eyes, Li Cu felt that this guy didn’t seem to be lying. There was a gleam in his eyes that ordinary people didn’t have; it was a kind of subconscious contempt. Clearly, this guy had experienced far more than an average person could endure, and to Li Cu, he seemed to be looking at another kind of lower life form—one that could be consumed.

“I’ll study hard tonight,” Li Cu said. “But you have to tell me the ins and outs of the situation; you promised me.”

Wu Xie glanced around, then took a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Li Cu. When Li Cu opened it, he found it was a newspaper. The headline read: “Apple Daily – Guan Gen.”

Then, Wu Xie recounted some of the earlier information about Lan Ting and Gulongjing to Li Cu. After listening, Li Cu struggled to grasp the main point: “Are you saying that people who have been to Gulongjing might not appear in photographs?”

“Yes,” Wu Xie replied. “According to what she described to me, that’s indeed the case.”

“But how is that possible? That violates the laws of physics,” Li Cu said. “The reason people see things, and cameras can take pictures, is that there are things that can reflect light. It shouldn’t be possible for some things to reflect into a person’s eyes but not into a camera.”

“Actually, it is possible,” Wu Xie said. “At first, I thought it was her nonsense, but then I thought about it. The reason why ‘Daoda’ can’t be captured in a camera might actually be a possibility.”

“What?” Li Cu thought it was impossible.

“Because Daoda doesn’t exist in reality. Let’s assume something happened to Daoda in Gulongjing, and she didn’t return with the tour group. If Daoda was never in the group to begin with, but Lan Ting had a hallucination and thought she saw Daoda, that’s not impossible.”

“That sounds like a plot from a lot of bad American movies, and in the end, didn’t it turn out she committed suicide?”

“I just want to tell you that in this world, nothing is impossible, and nothing is beyond explanation,” said Wu Xie. “Perhaps what you explain has nothing to do with the truth, but having an explanation is far more important than not having one.”

Li Cu seemed to understand but felt that it wasn’t worth engaging in a serious debate with someone like him, so he changed the subject: “Aren’t you a tomb raider? Why are you working as a photographer for a female writer and also writing?”

“I became a tomb raider because of my lineage and a promise. Once I leave this circle, there are many things I won’t be able to do, and many people I won’t be able to help,” Wu Xie said. “Some people commit small evils because they know that if they leave, those small evils could turn into real great evils.”

Li Cu still didn’t understand, but he felt a bit of admiration for the way Wu Xie smoked. Is this what true masculinity looks like?

While he was pondering this, Wang Meng returned, holding several stacks of documents, all containing information about tour groups from the past year.

The three of them sat down, and Wang Meng asked Wu Xie, “Boss, what do you need these for?”

“I’ll tell you once you see them,” Wu Xie replied, flipping through the documents. Each file contained a photo, a group shot taken by the tour leader after the group gathered at the airport. A banner was held up in the background that read: XX Investigation Tour Group. This photo serves a dual purpose: one for the archives and the other for selling. “Look closely at the people in these photos, at the brands and quantities of their cameras. I believe we can analyze which expedition teams lost cameras here.”

Li Cu took the photos, and looking at the numbers Wang Meng had compiled, he noticed that the least common were the ordinary point-and-shoot cameras with colorful shells. He said, “We mainly need to look for colored cameras, comparing colors and models. There aren’t many tour groups, so it’s unlikely that two people from different groups would have the same color and model of camera.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Wu Xie said.

Li Cu glanced at the young boss, feeling that his words were always hinting at something, as if he was constantly teaching him, which only made him feel more puzzled.

The three of them studied the photos, and soon they identified two tour groups that had lost cameras, but only two. Based on the number of cameras, unless half the people in both groups brought more than one camera, there must be another group that couldn’t be identified.

However, the probability of someone bringing two or more mobile phones in such tour groups was also quite high, as point-and-shoots and DSLRs serve different purposes. But according to common reasoning, the chances of another tour group being unidentifiable were even greater.

Moreover, another possible reason could be that no one in that tour group brought a point-and-shoot camera; they all had professional cameras instead.

According to this line of speculation, they continued their search. However, pursuing this assumption also led to a dead end. In today’s increasingly affluent society, if you go on a trip without a big camera, it seems like it doesn’t count as a real trip. Therefore, even if a group consists entirely of DSLR cameras, it is not easy to distinguish them; this cannot be considered a breakthrough.

When this direction proved unfruitful, they turned to investigate based on time, as Wu Xie believed that these three groups must have been active during the same period. However, there were no records of simultaneous groups in Wang Meng’s data.

There were a total of eleven groups in the records, and they had found two so far: one from Qingdao and the other from Beijing. The Beijing group was Lan Ting’s group, and they saw Lan Ting and Dao Dao in the photos. The arrival times of these two groups in Gutongjing were a week apart. The group closest to these two had a time difference of two weeks, while another was a month apart. The time gaps seemed a bit too long. Moreover, if the groups from Qingdao and Beijing were already time-separated, it indicated that the cameras here were not destroyed all at once; they merely used this place as a fixed destruction site.

Aside from this, there were no other leads.

Wang Meng said, “How about I start by checking these two groups?”

Wu Xie nodded, seemingly without any better ideas. At that moment, Li Cu suddenly noticed a face in the photo he was holding that made him feel very uncomfortable.

He glanced at Wu Xie, then back at the person in the photo, feeling very strange. He saw a young man smiling happily in the picture, and this person looked very much like Wu Xie. No, not just similar; he was practically Wu Xie. Had this boss come here with a group before?

“Boss, look,” he said to Wu Xie. “Who do you think this person looks like?” He kept staring at the face.

Wu Xie took the photo, and Wang Meng chimed in, “You’re just a hostage; what right do you have to call him boss? Don’t try to get close to him.” Wu Xie ignored them and focused on the photo in Li Cu’s hand, and upon closer inspection, he frowned.

His heart sank. Over the past period, every time he investigated that matter, he always felt a twinge in his heart when he saw that face. He had thought he would never see this person again in his life, but clearly, this person had been very active all along. This meant that what he thought was over might not be finished at all.

Wang Meng leaned in to look at the photo and said, “Boss, it’s him again.”

Wu Xie nodded, and Li Cu asked, “Isn’t this you?” Wu Xie shook his head, “It’s not me, or perhaps this is the real me.”