CH-029

Shu Li had said he was escorting Father Symeon back to the church, and then he would be taking Raymond and Finnian back to Savoie pastoral district.

In practice, he waited at the town entrance until past three in the morning — until the whole town was completely quiet, and Finnian said he couldn't hear any other sounds. Only then did he tell Raymond they could head back.

The return trip didn't need to be so rushed. Shu Li and Raymond took turns driving the cart.

Even so, Shu Li let Raymond rest first — it wasn't as though he particularly needed Raymond to take over driving.

Because Raymond had been especially hard-worked today. Shu Li had made him build, practically single-handedly and at the last minute, a complete makeshift wooden stage. He hadn't refused or complained once, sweating until his clothes were damp with crystalline salt flowers forming along the edges.

Shu Li wasn't the sort to squeeze the labor out of someone and deny them a full night's sleep.

Finnian was also exhausted from the night. He had been on his feet all day during the daytime, and once the night returned to calm, he naturally began to doze off. But when he noticed Shu Li driving the cart along the road, he found himself quite awake again — and came to sit beside Shu Li, wanting to chat.

"We could have slept a night at Father Symeon's — he'd probably have been fine with it anyway," Finnian murmured, sitting close to Shu Li and feeling the warmth radiating off him.

"I made a promise to your parents to bring you back in the morning," Shu Li replied. "I can't make them wait that long."

Finnian thought Shu Li was overthinking it. He roamed around all day and his parents never cared about him. Only if he failed to come home in time for dinner would they say a few words. Just moving the morning return time to the afternoon wouldn't prompt his parents to say anything.

But just as he was about to argue, he thought of how his parents' eyes had reddened and welled up after the kidnapping incident — and he couldn't bring himself to say it. His chest felt both sour and numb, because when he had woken up, he'd wanted to say something to them, but out of shame, or fear, or excessive guilt, he'd been unable to say anything at all.

In the end all he had managed was: "I'm hungry."

And his dad had immediately cursed: "You little wretch."

The whole harrowing episode had faded into ordinariness just like that. Three meals a day, day after day, no different from before.

But Finnian had in fact never forgotten. He felt it was like a scar — left on his heart, impossible to forget. He was also certain that scar wasn't made by the fear of nearly dying, but by the first time he'd realized he had almost become the person most hurtful to his own parents. That had made him very sad. Equally, he'd come to understand that this hurt coexisted with love — there was no resolving it. Precisely because of love, the wound cut deep.

Finnian had spent many days carrying this vague and murky feeling. Because he didn't know how to relieve it, and because it all seemed so immaterial, as though speaking it aloud served no purpose, he'd always suppressed the thoughts without following them through.

Now that the topic of his parents had come up, it tugged at his heartstrings.

Still a child with a touch of pride and self-respect, not wanting to continue the awkward and embarrassing topic — yet also somewhat tired — he rested his head lightly against Shu Li's arm. Seeing no reaction, Finnian grew bolder and pressed his head against his shoulder, saying in a half-murmur: "Is everything over? We don't need to go through this again?"

"Mm." Shu Li replied.

In truth, if Shu Li hadn't had any thoughts or intentions of his own, he would never have made a special trip to Stonehollow pastoral district. His principle was simple: he could accept endless trial and error and failure, but he didn't like doing useless work with no strategy and no efficiency, and he wouldn't allow himself to be swayed by others' expectations and hopes.

The first time Father Symeon had come over, Shu Li had concluded he would have no way to resolve the situation in a short period of time.

The reasons for children crying in the middle of the night were many. Even with the mention of the clock's ringing as a clue pointing toward sound resonance phenomena, in reality there were far too many things that could cause such phenomena — what if there were accidents or coincidences? Out of caution, Shu Li had only proposed a stopgap measure: remove the clock from the square. If the children were simply unable to sleep due to low-frequency noise accidentally produced by the clock, then temporarily addressing the clock was sufficient.

Beyond that, without professional expertise, there was little more he could do. And he didn't know when such a thing might resolve itself — there were too many uncertainties — so Shu Li hadn't made the journey to waste time and energy on an inconclusive trip.

The second time Raymond came and moved Shu Li to agree, Shu Li agreed without hesitation because he had noticed the water hammer effect at play, and seized on that clue.

The water hammer effect could be directly linked to the underground water supply pipe system beneath the town square. And if the water supply system was emitting persistent low-frequency sounds capable of causing resonance — excluding the possibility of a mechanical device operating continuously — then someone was repeatedly striking the pipes.

Whether this was purposeful or incidental was not the crux of the matter for Shu Li.

The crux was the clues this presented.

One was that the water hammer effect appeared suddenly at night, under circumstances that recurred. The water hammer effect by its nature cannot continuously produce low-frequency noise — it characteristically strikes once and triggers no further sustained resonance.

The other was that the duration of the children's crying had grown longer than usual, with some even hearing bell-like sounds. This meant that whatever was causing the resonance remained present — and on the very night Father Symeon removed the clock, the perpetrator had added to their own workload.

All of this pointed to someone in the underground channels beneath the square.

And whatever had made them decide to increase their workload, it certainly wasn't because they were suddenly in a good mood and wanted to do a little extra work at night. It was either a psychological factor — something like the anxiety of "afraid of being discovered, wanting to finish quickly" — or an objective condition, such as an impending long journey that would prevent them from continuing.

From the standpoint of objective conditions, now was the ideal moment to catch the culprit: they wouldn't be able to hide and wait for things to blow over, nor would they be able to run to the ends of the earth and escape.

That was the fundamental reason Shu Li had set out.

All of this could be reasoned through in a moment, but thoroughly explaining each step to Raymond and Finnian — including the physical phenomena, criminal psychology, infant brain development, and other knowledge — would require a great deal of words. Especially explaining why there would be no demon involvement in this case, which was, in Shu Li's view, the most difficult part.

Regardless, upon arriving in town, Shu Li had already begun building a psychological profile.

Drawing on information from Father Symeon and what had been gathered, combined with the fact that the town had had no outside visitors recently and no other major events were about to occur, the culprit's psychological profile quickly took clear shape in Shu Li's mind.

At least two perpetrators. No single person could work continuously in a confined space for an hour like a machine — at minimum they would need to take turns resting. Let alone sustaining the work for a full three hours.

They only operated at midnight, spent little additional time on it, and their approach showed planning — not reckless or impulsive, not given to taking undue risks. Furthermore, they had a stable existence in the town and could not disappear in the daytime.

Perpetrator A was the controlling mastermind. Between thirty-five and forty years old, unmarried or widowed, no children, not living with parents. In town, Perpetrator A had a good reputation and left people with an impression of reliability and approachability — likely a teacher or shopkeeper in daily life. Preferring dark-toned clothing such as grey, warm brown, or deep blue, with a habit of accessorizing with personal touches in their dress. Additionally, a tendency to operate on schedule — likely carrying a wrist watch or pocket watch, meticulous about details.

Perpetrator B, compared to A, was more of a dependent figure. Around twenty-five to thirty years old, looking older than their actual age, unmarried, no children, both parents deceased. Cautious in their conduct. A low-profile presence, easy to overlook, disinclined to be active or to communicate with people, working in something that required no social interaction — just keeping one's head down and working, like a blacksmith or carpenter. Careless about dress, with loose or faded clothing as the norm, and perpetually worn-out shoes never replaced.

With the psychological profile in hand, narrowing it down within a town of just over three hundred people was very straightforward.

When Shu Li had been in school, his student body alone had numbered twelve hundred. And the background information had already been helpfully highlighted. Moreover, the people he'd encountered so far were mostly easy to trick into revealing themselves or letting things slip.

If he had wanted to crack this case, it could honestly have been resolved before noon.

In practice, all it took was reporting to the local constables that someone had been excavating in the underground water supply system at night, and identifying the perpetrators' distinctive features. They quickly found two suspects. The suspects confessed without much resistance — because the previous night, during their operation, they had accidentally caused too much noise with the water mains, and had spent the entire day in a state of terrified anticipation waiting for a constable to come knocking.

They had no idea that the sounds they'd made while working at night could produce low-frequency noise, or that it had long since caught the children's attention.

The truth of the case was this: a week prior, Perpetrator B, while performing routine maintenance on the water supply system, had accidentally discovered a marble statue buried in the hardened, silt-dense layer of soil. Though only one hand was visible, it was so lifelike that Perpetrator B had initially mistaken it for a corpse — until on closer inspection they realized it was only a statue.

They told Perpetrator A about it, who immediately suspected it might be some kind of sacred relic. They believed that if the statue could be sold to the church, it would fetch a large sum of gold. Not wanting to draw attention, and afraid of damaging the statue itself, they worked quietly by night over several days, gradually revealing the statue's outline. The sudden increase in workload the previous night was because they had noticed Father Symeon suddenly interfering in the town's affairs, and fearing discovery, had rushed to speed up their work.

In doing so, Perpetrator B had accidentally knocked the water valve.

The rest was as everyone knew. In the end, the two were sentenced by the mayor to three months of unpaid labor for the Stonehollow chapel.

After the incident, the town's constables, along with Father Symeon and his faithful, rushed to the site and excavated the marble statue.

What no one had anticipated was that what they had taken for a sacred relic was in fact an unfinished work carved by Father Symeon before he had entered the priesthood — abandoned in grief at the loss of his daughter.

Afterward, Father Symeon brought the sculpture back to the church and spent an entire month finally completing it.

But that is a tale for another time.

For Shu Li, from the moment he arrived in Stonehollow and observed the interaction between Father Symeon and the townspeople, his intentions had gone far beyond simply solving the case and resolving the children's nighttime crying.

Perhaps this is because Chinese people all share a certain way of thinking:

That is — "since we're already here, we might as well do everything."

After that, Shu Li found himself quite busy.

First, the stage design. Without microphones, for Father Symeon to have his voice carry to more distant ears when standing center-stage, reflecting panels would need to be built — and not just a simple raised platform. Then, the musical performance. Shu Li was not at all confident that Father Symeon could hold an audience through an entire hour's address without losing them. Something compelling was necessary. He himself didn't want to put on anything like a stage play, and music was the ideal medium of engagement — with good music, people would naturally be drawn in.

Shu Li had originally considered going up himself, since there were many popular, healing melodies from modern times stored in his memory. But then Father Symeon's faithful, having heard from Raymond that Father Symeon was going to hold a public purification ceremony, came over asking if there was anything they could help with.

As it turned out, these faithful were part of some sort of Stonehollow chapel music group — elderly, with time to spare, who regularly practiced music together at the chapel and all had some musical grounding. Shu Li had played half of a random healing-style café tune from memory, and the faithful had marveled: "This sounds exactly like the requiem described in the scripture stories."

An elderly man with an accordion immediately joined in and successfully continued the piece. "It's so beautiful — the sound of moonlight, cleansing the soul."

Shu Li could not help but let his eyelashes flutter.

He had the uncomfortable sense that he was inadvertently brainwashing the faithful.

Overall, though, things were moving in a positive direction.

The musical performance enriched the entire presentation format, but was not the core of it.

Next came the "descent of a miracle" — to build Father Symeon's standing. If successful, it would completely transform Father Symeon's image in Stonehollow pastoral district. But this part was, for Shu Li, simultaneously the simplest and the most troublesome.

Because the effect had to be spectacular and attention-grabbing all at once — he knew clearly it would need to be achieved through sheer volume. Beyond that, the content absolutely could not be seen by anyone, so Shu Li went under the pretense of offering pre-ceremony prayers and listening for divine guidance, and in fact spent the time frantically folding paper butterflies in a small room.

The paper was torn from the pages of a Bible, since Shu Li had no paper to hand and buying some would have been too conspicuous. Besides, if someone picked one up and found it inscribed with scripture, it would only add to the sense of fateful holiness.

However, after an hour of work and only forty-five butterflies, Shu Li decisively called the nimble-fingered Finnian into the small room. He still needed to negotiate with the mayor to attract more people to the square and couldn't spend all his time just folding paper.

Finnian was exceptionally quick-witted. Without a single word of explanation, he just watched once and was already folding better and more neatly than Shu Li — and could even use very thin strips of paper to fold even tinier miniature butterflies.

Shu Li handed the paper-folding work entirely over to him. He had estimated that another hundred or so would be enough, with the rest of the small paper pieces cut into little triangles to pass as paper snowflakes if needed.

But when he came back to check, Finnian had spent just over a hundred minutes with his head down and produced more than five hundred tidy paper butterflies. When Shu Li entered, his eyes didn't even need to look at the paper — his fingertips moved rapidly, and the paper in his hands seemed to have a life of its own, transforming into butterfly after butterfly ready to spread its wings. And at his side was a ruler Shu Li hadn't used, clearly something Finnian had introduced as an aid somewhere along the way.

Hearing movement at the door, he looked up and gave Shu Li a grin — not the bright and innocent sweetness of an obedient child, but the satisfied pride of someone who knows they've done something impressive, smiling as they await admiration after completing some feat. He shook a butterfly triumphantly, as though showing off battle trophies.

His voice was light and quick: "This is way more interesting than pulling weeds. Am I doing well at this?"

Then, pausing, his eyes flickered with a mischievous, childlike light — yet tinged with genuine sincerity: "Would you want to tell me what you're planning to do?"

It wasn't actually necessary to answer. Ambiguity could work fine too, since there were always ways to make an explanation sound plausible — like saying the paper butterflies had come to life because they received divine blessing. After all, no one could prove otherwise.

But Shu Li was also thinking: if he could change Father Symeon, could he perhaps also change the fate of a young shepherd boy?

"Do you want to learn?" Shu Li thought.

He picked up a butterfly, held it in his hand, then opened it — and the paper butterfly vanished from before Finnian's eyes.

"Except for learning purposes, don't perform the same trick in front of the same person more than three times. If you can manage that, I'll teach you."

Very quickly, Shu Li had himself a small magic assistant.

And this small assistant was an even better performer than he was.

The last piece was the finale's protagonist, Father Symeon, taking the stage — the last and most important element.

……

Hearing about how the Stonehollow pastoral district affair had concluded, Finnian thought back to the image of the townspeople dispersing and the lanterns gradually going dark, and felt a lingering sense of incompletion — an odd, inexplicable emptiness.

He felt something was missing, but he didn't know what.

And so he looked at his own hands, turning them over and back, finding a paper butterfly in his palm — lightly dusted with phosphorescent powder, so that it would gleam in the night. The others on the stage had had small pinholes pricked in them to let light through, making them appear to glow on their own.

As he turned the question over in his mind, he played with the paper butterfly.

This butterfly had a guiding thread attached to it. During the performance chasing the butterfly on stage, the thread had secretly been used to control the direction. When performing the chase, he would do his best to cover the thread's traces and block the audience's line of sight. And when the butterfly "disappeared," what actually happened was that with his other hand, he drew the thread back in — causing the butterfly to slip up his sleeve.

But Shu Li's performance was completely different.

The butterfly would disappear from behind his back, as though playing hide-and-seek with him. And at the end — that moment of releasing the butterflies from Father Symeon's hands on stage — why had they all taken flight? He couldn't figure it out at all.

Had it been wind power? But how would Shu Li know which direction the wind would come from, or when?

Shu Li noticed him playing with the afternoon's paper butterfly, a puzzled and muddled expression on his face, and asked gently: "Is there something on your mind?"

Finnian thought maybe if he understood the puzzles one by one, he'd know what he was really looking for.

So he said haltingly: "Did you deceive me?"

"What?"

Finnian said: "You told me this was just magic. But I think you have divine power."

Shu Li was caught off guard and laughed: "Whatever you don't understand, you can just ask directly."

Finnian immediately blurted out his question: "Then in that final scene, how did the butterflies all fly up at once? You do magic, but how do you control the wind?"

"Did you notice where the stage was positioned?" Shu Li helped Finnian recall. "We were at a narrow opening with buildings on both sides — a spot like that easily creates a wind channel, producing a strong draft."

Finnian couldn't help tilting his head: "A draft?"

Shu Li said: "Finnian, there are far too many things in this world that you can't yet understand. All of this knowledge requires constant learning before it can come together into a coherent whole. For example — in this case, why were the children crying at night? Were they sick?"

He continued: "No. In truth, they were hearing sounds that adults couldn't hear. Think about it — you're sleeping peacefully and a noise suddenly disrupts you. Wouldn't that put you in a bad mood? And this kind of low-frequency sound resonates with certain objects in our everyday lives — just like when a wolf howls, other wolves can't help but respond. So some people heard the clock striking; others heard bells chiming on their own."

"The more you learn, the more you'll understand how the world works."

Finnian's eyes went wide, still puzzled: "But none of the books I've read ever mentioned any of this. How do you know?" His mind turned quickly, and before long he said: "I've seen people make puzzle boxes before. They said only the designer would know how it worked. Could it be..."

"......"

"A deity told you in secret? Or you have divine power and you don't want to expose it, so you're pretending it's some trick you call magic?"

Shu Li could only laugh helplessly: "I genuinely don't have divine power. Magic can't conjure something that doesn't exist — for instance, I can't conjure a second Finnian."

Finnian reluctantly accepted Shu Li's unsatisfying answer.

Drowsiness descended again in the momentary calm, and Finnian couldn't help but yawn. He wanted to go to sleep. He could be this willing to drop it because he instinctively felt that in the future, Shu Li would still be willing to explain to him — just as he had this time — how all these things came about.

He was in no hurry for this one moment. They had much time ahead.

Shu Li saw him getting sleepy and gave his shoulder a light pat, telling him to go lie down in the back of the cart.

Finnian agreed and went. Just before he drifted off to sleep, he thought of the image of Shu Li cradling Father Symeon's elbow as he released countless glimmering butterflies — and of the people below, gazing upward, as though a deity were looking down upon them with warmth, sprinkling light across their faces too, so that their eyes also held light.

Father Alistair had said that magic couldn't conjure anything that hadn't been prepared for in advance.

Finnian felt that what he had diligently prepared was far more than a stage, music, and paper butterflies — there were many other things no one had noticed.

Like hope. Like care. And a heartfelt blessing.

He had prepared so many things. Had he received what he himself wanted in return? Or was a priest simply obligated to give without receiving?

Reaching this thought, Finnian suddenly understood why he had felt unsatisfied, why his heart had felt hollow.

It wasn't because he still had questions about the magic, or anything else about Shu Li, but rather—

The Shu Li who was driving and watching the road ahead felt something jabbing at his back. He turned around to find Finnian propping up his head on the floor of the cart, watching him.

"Father Alistair."

"I'm not a believer — if I pray to the Lord, will He hear it?"

Shu Li couldn't help teasing the boy who had suddenly turned philosophical: "Not necessarily."

Finnian instantly deflated: "Then forget it."

Shu Li thought this was actually quite funny, and said: "What did you want to say?"

"I wanted to tell Him — to treat you better. You do so many things. He should reward you. How can He not say a single word?"

"……"

Shu Li's gaze became complicated and tender all at once, and a warm ripple spread through his heart.

Finnian hadn't noticed any of this, just said with a touch of indignation: "Hmph. If He can't even hear, then forget it. He's not even as good as me!"

Then, as he spoke, he reached over and gave Shu Li a couple of consoling pats on the back — his expression solemn as a sworn promise: "I'll definitely steal a piece of my dad's bread for you first thing in the morning. You just wait!"

Shu Li finally laughed out loud.

"Sleep, you unfilial child!"