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墨書 Inktalez
The stone steps of the courthouse were still damp with morning dew. As I stepped on the eighth curled Ginkgo leaf, a deafening cheer erupted in my ears, like firecrackers exploding.
Dressed in an indanthrene cloth shirt, the newsboy flung a copy of Shen Bao into the air, its front page featuring a portrait of Mei Lan that floated and sank in the ink. The blush on her lips spread like a red camellia that had withered before blooming, lying in the snow.
“Hero!”
A rickshaw puller lifted his sweat towel and pointed at me, the sound of his bell shattering in the throng of people.
Ladies in Xiangyun silk qipaos pushed to the front, their malachite earrings shimmering like a green rain. As their handkerchiefs brushed against my wrist, I caught a whiff of the unique agarwood scent from Lao Feng Xiang's gold shop on Nanjing Road.
Boss Lu’s jade mouthpiece fractured into seven arcs under the sunlight, but when it hit the ground, it transformed into clinking silver coins.
Suddenly, dockworkers dressed in short pants emerged from the crowd, their twenty-eight pairs of straw sandals sticky with the unique asphalt of Hongkou Warehouse. As they lifted me and Boss Lu's rattan chairs, I noticed each one had Mei Lan's signature Yu Ji mask tattooed on the back of their necks.
“Boss Mei is watching from above!”
Mother Wang's vegetable basket collided with my knee, three muddy yams rolling out and forming coordinates for French Concession's New Warehouse on the blue bricks.
Shivering, she pulled out a handkerchief package; inside the faded blue cloth lay half a jade pendant—Mei Lan’s sheep fat jade that she always wore while performing Youyuan Jingmeng—now glimmering with Tie Xiu red from the interrogation room's water prison.
As the pendant slipped into my palm, I caught a lingering whiff of nitroglycerin from Mother Wang’s sleeve. “Miss Mei clutched this pendant before she passed away, claiming it had been dipped in the blood of forty-nine Eastern Wanderers, more effective than any talisman from Great Luo Golden Immortal.”
Her frail hand suddenly tightened around my wrist, her nails digging into my unhealed whip marks. “In this world, what can truly ward off evil is not jade but this—”
She lifted her garment to reveal a German grenade strapped to her waist, its safety pin wrapped in Mei Lan’s costume’s gold thread.
Boss Lu’s mongoose robe swept over a sea of silver coins as a jade button the size of a copper coin suddenly popped open, revealing an inner lining painted with Shencheng’s defense map. “Tonight at Ballymen, there’s a new show: Liang Hongyu Strikes the Drum at Jinshan.”
His nails stained red brushed against my calloused palm. “I heard the male lead will wear a Ghost Face Helmet specially made by Black Dragon Society. Imagine if that helmet gets stuck…”
The crowd erupted into an even louder roar.
Twelve youths in student uniforms carried Mei Lan’s nanmu coffin towards us. The coffin lid was riddled with bullet holes filled with red silk, resembling her piercing arrow from Mu Guiying Takes Command from afar.
I saw Xiao Cui dressed as Lady White following behind the coffin; a red camellia fell from her hair, and a microfilm rolled out just as it landed at my feet.
“Brother A Qiang,” she called to me in a Kunqiang-like tone. As her flowing sleeves brushed against my waist pendant, three ninja stars clinked to the ground. “Sister Mei said there are gadgets buried beneath the stage that are louder than guns.” She tapped her toes on the ground; silver bells attached to her embroidered shoes formed a Suzhou Code—marking exactly when tonight's military train would pass North Station.
At midnight, I felt around for gaps in the theater's parquet floor when suddenly the seventh gold brick shifted.
When I opened the hidden compartment, twenty-seven balloon models adorned with “Fu” characters lay inside; each bamboo frame was engraved with military intelligence cipher codes from Shanghai Station.
At the very bottom rested Mei Lan’s handwritten script for Anti-Jin Soldiers, densely filled with notes on Hongkou District's sewer directions.
“This is the true opera role placard.” Boss Lu suddenly emerged from behind a mirror frame; his copper playbill split in two, revealing a miniature telegraph knob.
French Concession Police Station changed to a safe made in Germany. You said that if you pour some special gouache into the keyhole..." He flicked the ashes on the Mongoose Robe, and the ashes were clearly mixed with the unique sulfur particles of Osaka Arsenal. I leaned against Mei Lan's dressing table, holding the jade pendant, and the cracks on the mirror cut my face into seven pieces. When the first ray of morning light pierced the rouge box, the cracks suddenly formed a complete Society Emblem - the blood oozing from the bottom of the mirror was slowly outlining the reflection of the Waibaidu Bridge at noon tomorrow.
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