Title In Progress

Chapter 21: Going Across the Pier to Get Ice Cream On the Dot

This is a fan translation posted to title-in-progress.dreamwidth.org. Support the author if you can.
After training was over it was time for an independent patrol, so Shao Dongmi had another fierce battle against the carb demons and suffered a crushing defeat. He then decided to go back and have a look at the scene from yesterday, thinking that he had left in too much of a hurry and there might be a few things that had slipped him by.


After obtaining approval from Yan Chenli, Shao Dongmi drove off to where the incident had taken place. He paid attention to the map this time and saw that the street was labeled as number 216. As he returned to the scene, he ran into a group of scavenging children who looked between six and eight years old, and heard them raise the alarm as they shouted loudly “They’re back! Run!!” and scattered away in all directions. The oldest among them couldn’t have been more than ten years old, wearing tattered rags and so thin as to look a little abnormal. The little children looked at Shao Dongmi with vigilant and fearful eyes as they ran away.

Shao Dongmi yelled for them to wait a few times, but was forced to let them go.


Since the deserters had been wantonly plundering the place, the scene of the crime was more chaotic than it had been yesterday. Originally there had been piles of cardboard boxes and plastic bags, but now they were littered all over the place, the floors and walls were covered with the terrifying slash marks left behind by Venus, and the deceased had been stripped of their clothing. Seeing the complete mess made Shao Dongmi feel even more crushed.


His search turned up nothing. Shao Dongmi leaned against his armoured car, thinking about how many lives had been meaninglessly and quietly lost, which made him feel somewhat frustrated and uneasy.

If this were Yinjiang, who knows what kind of huge trouble this would have stirred up. On second thought, if this really were Yinjiang, the whole thing wouldn’t even have happened to begin with.

Shao Dongmi shook his head and decided not to think about it again, letting himself off.


After that he discovered something, surprisingly.

Hey, am I already off the clock?

He looked at his watch, it was just four o’clock.

The Tribunal’s patrols were all arranged by oneself, and there were no strict workloads. It seemed like Mu Lin hadn’t been entirely unreasonable when he’d used the word easy to describe working at the Tribunal. It was indeed quite friendly as far as those hoodlums were concerned.

Thinking about Mu Lin, Shao Dongmi found his contact info from the internal communications network and called him directly.

“Senior Mu Lin? What are you up to?” Shao Dongmi asked in a friendly manner.

On the other side of the phone, Mu Lin answered nervously: “What’s the matter? Are you checking in on me?”

Shao Dongmi spoke confidently: “I’m off work, so I’m free now. Are you done with your work? When are you going to take me to have fun?”

Mu Lin: “?”

Shao Dongmi: “?”

Mu Lin understood, and he gradually became excited: “Really? Young man, you’re really on the right path!! Okay, I’m just about to leave! Do you see that centremost port on the map? I’ll meet you there! Hurry up, alright? I won’t wait for you if you take too long!”


Shao Dongmi hung up the call and returned to his car, checked the map, then turned around to look at Chen Xing inside his hibernation pod.

When he was researching information yesterday, he came across a term called Death-Related Stress Disorder.

An Executioner’s consciousness was not exactly what was traditionally thought of when referring to a consciousness, therefore they also did not have what were traditionally referred to as “dreams”. When their body was in hibernation, an Executioner’s consciousness would remain at the moment in which the source of their consciousness was most active. In the vast majority of cases the moment in which a person’s consciousness was most active was during the time they faced their own death, so most of the time an Executioner would continue to confront the moment of their own death during the process of hibernation, over and over again in an unceasing cycle.

This was why the majority of Executioners would display strong violent tendencies when they woke up, since, in the moment before they awakened, the Executioner would be right in the middle of a frightening death.

It should be the same for Chen Xing right now.


Shao Dongmi was never actually sure of what Chen Xing’s attitude had been towards death.

Chen Xing would sometimes sigh and wrinkle his small face, saying how his illness was costing his family too much money, how he was certain that his mom and dad would still be able to live their lives if he wasn’t here anymore, and how he really hoped he would die tomorrow to save his parents some money.

Chen Xing hadn’t seemed to be that afraid of death.

Shao Dongmi didn’t have any ideas about life when he was little, or rather, he didn’t have any respect for it. He thought that death was just death, that he would close his eyes and not care about anything, and there would be no suffering. He’d even agreed at the time by saying: That’s right.

Thinking back on it now, he really wanted to slap himself hard.


Chen Xing had been given his expected time of death by doctors when he was very little, but Chen Xing had forcefully postponed that date day after day, year after year.

It was only now that Shao Dongmi realised that he wouldn’t have been able to go on if he hadn’t been reluctant to leave this world behind.

Perhaps the reason why Chen Xing’s Death-Related Stress wasn’t severe was because he’d long since been used to being afraid.


Shao Dongmi followed the map and drove towards the south east, arriving to the central port over half an hour later.

The port still retained shadows of its former prosperity, there were many abandoned shipping containers and large warehouses along the road, the hollow whistle of the wind travelling through the large metal boxes. Although the dock had been in disrepair for years its former magnificence could still be seen on its thick wooden planks, and the salty sea breeze blew head-on, bringing with it the rusty smell of countless abandoned ships moored at the dock, which had been reduced to merely their frames.

After joining up with Mu Lin, Mu Lin held a cigarette in his mouth and circled a few points on the map displayed on the dashboard of Shao Dongmi’s car, “This is our final destination, but we can’t drive there directly with the Tribunal’s cars, we have to find a slightly hidden place to park in outside. That should be around here, we’ll talk more when we get there.”

Free of Eden was located to the southeast of Augustus, the surrounding roads encircled it like layers of ripples wrapping around it, and one could see that it was once the city centre which traffic converged around.

“We’re parking the cars so far away? How are we going to get there then?” Shao Dongmi estimated the distance, and suddenly recalled the terrible memories of climbing and crawling through the front lines of fire.

“What are you so worried about, have you never been on a tour before? Hahaha, let’s go!” Mu Lin hopped off the car and slammed the door, startling Shao Dognmi with the sound of the slam. Afterwards, Shao Dongmi followed his vehicle and continued southwards.


The two armoured cars moved in formation through the dilapidated roads, looking like something straight out of an apocalyptic movie. When he had seen those movies before, Shao Dongmi felt like the ruined landscape was very cool, but now that he was deep inside of it, it only felt heavy.

However, the bleak atmosphere didn’t last too long, and Shao Dongmi could clearly sense the difference even before reaching their parking destination.

In the distance, about one or two kilometres away, he could see a brilliant light that was hard to ignore. There was also a huge skyscraping tower covered in lights like the Tokyo Skytree, and there was even an enormous Ferris Wheel every bit as good as the ones found in the bustling areas of top-tier cities. The sky had not yet turned dark, and the towering buildings were covered in gorgeous, twinkling multicoloured lights as if money were of no concern.

When they reached their parking spot, Shao Dongmi was already amazed by the size of the building in front of them, which was as large as a building should be in a booming, prosperous city. A crowd of people was already roaming nearby, they were wearing shabby clothes and covered in dirt from head to toe as they gathered something from the sewers, and the unpleasant stench of rot was still in the air.

There was a sign there like that of a bus station, and a few people were already waiting in place. Some had filthy rags draped over their bodies, and others were dressed just as cleanly and neatly as him, but there were also some people tightly covering up with baseball caps, hoods, facemasks, and dark sunglasses, as if they were afraid of being recognised.

“Get off the car.” Mu Lin knocked on Shao Dongmi’s window.

Shao Dongmi felt even more stunned, “How can this rotten place still have such a bustling commercial district? The plastics outside have almost been eaten away, who the hell is spending anything here?”

“If it weren’t due to the city’s bankruptcy, there really would be no way for there to be such a great paradise. You’ll understand later.” Mu Lin laughed.

Mu Lin had already changed into casual clothes, he was wearing a flashy loose shirt and garish pink trousers, he also had gold-rimmed sunglasses hanging from a glamorous thick golden chain and resting on his chest. He was biting down on a cigarette, looking as much like a gangster as he possibly could have.

Shao Dongmi felt like his eyes had been contaminated, but he bit his tongue and spoke: “You have excellent taste, bro.”

Mu Lin puffed his chest with pride: “Of course! Let me tell you something, even if you get your Tribunal uniform later, never in a million yearss come here wearing that uniform. Many people in Augustus consider Executioners to be monsters, so if you don’t take their heads off, they’ll take yours.”

Shao Dongmi stared blankly: “Huh? You mean, we’re going in empty-handed? We’re not bringing the Executioners?”

“No shit, are you here to have fun or to wreck the place? If you bring that thing with you it’ll start a fight at the security checkpoint.” Mu Lin flicked his cigarette disdainfully, “Don’t worry, the security at Free of Eden is quite good, not any worse than the one at your Yinjiang.”

Shao Dongmi felt down. A security check, just a plain old security check again. Were they so effective?

Shen Lu could have avoided the security check and gotten in by himself, but Chen Xing definitely couldn’t. During training that morning, Shen Lu could calmly listen to Yan Chenli’s completely detailed explanation about every aspect of an Executioner, and the number on his collar didn’t move at all, staying stable throughout. Chen Xing couldn’t compare, he would crash just from hearing the name he’d been called while he was still alive.


By the time Mu Lin had smoked two cigarettes, a tour bus that was open on all sides came speeding from a distance. It had a coat of brand-new black paint, its insides flickered with light, and it was decorated with luxurious golden designs. The logo of an ouroboros with an apple was sprayed onto the front of the bus and its parking spot.

He never would have thought that the tour Mu Lin mentioned was a literal one.


The crowd waiting at the bus stop got on the vehicle one after the other, then the tour bus set off, carrying the people into that golden light.

On the way there, they passed through a standard security checkpoint. The staff were wearing suits, and they gave everyone a wristband with a number engraved on it. Shao Dongmi got one with the number 131791, and he heard that he could use the number to exchange for casino chips and register information, and even to participate in promotions and lottery drawings.

However, two people wearing shabby clothes were simply driven out of the bus. First they pleaded, then they cursed, but it was all useless. The vehicle rushed off, leaving them far behind.


Along the road, the surrounding buildings quickly became brand-new and flourishing, sporting huge screens almost as tall as a multy-storey building displaying an overwhelming amount of advertisements. The large screens flashed with images of juicy steak, ice cream decorated with mint leaves and sweetly-coloured macarons, as well as beautiful tanned women with glowing skin wearing sexy bikinis.

Neon lights overwhelmed their sight, and their eardrums were assaulted with the alternating tunes of leisurely jazz blues and exciting heavy metal. Halfway along the way a few people got on board again, they were wearing grey uniforms with metal eagle badges pinned on them. They laughed loudly and sang a pop song they’d just heard from the doors of a shop, and they carried the scent of mulberry and smoked plum wine.

The crowd inside the bus became more and more restless. Several young women wearing revealing clothes came and went along the main street, there were a few women wearing skintight leather bunny outfits and fuzzy ears, as well as samba dancers with outfits filled with exaggerated blue feathers. As the tour bus passed by, the women waved enthusiastically and winked at Shao Dongmi.

Mu Lin bit his cigarette as he looked out the window, then skilfully grabbed the railing and leaned out towards the road to smack a big-breasted cowgirl with his hand, the slap sending wheat-coloured waves rippling from his palm.

What a dazzling scene of luxury.


Shao Dongmi was flabbergasted.

One moment he was picking up trash in Death Stranding, and the next he was at the disco in Las Vegas.

Oh my god, Augustus! How many surprises do you have?!


Shao Dongmi suddenly realised that the strange, rotten smell that permeated every place in Augustus had disappeared at some point, and the air was filled with the sweet scent of fragrant wine and desserts.

Seeing that Shao Dongmi looked somewhat uncomfortable, Mu Lin curiously asked: “Why are you nervous? Don’t tell me you’ve never been to a night club?”

Shao Dongmi answered solemnly: “I have been, three times.”

Twice he’d gone to crack down on prostitution, and one had been a drug bust. He’d been, but not entirely.

Mu Lin elbowed Shao Dongmi on the shoulder and gestured towards one side of the street with his mouth, where two women wearing skintight black leather outfits with their breasts about to spill out of their bras were brandishing small black whips, teasing the tourists at the sides of the street.

Mu Lin: “Do you see that? If you slip them a twenty, they’ll whip your ass. Wanna try? It’s fun.”

Shao Dongmi shrunk back inside the bus: “? That won’t be necessary.”


Shao Dongmi was thinking of a way to slip away from Mu Lin when Mu Lin’s eyes suddenly flashed, “Whoa! Perfect! That’s the one for tonight!” then he hopped off the bus without another word and rushed towards a blue-eyed blonde wearing fifteen centimetre heels. The blonde woman also boldly wrapped her arms around his waist and hooked a finger around Mu Lin’s necklace as she led him inside the shop.

Okay, that made things easy.

Shao Dongmi crossed the seats and crawled towards the front row, where he tapped the driver on the shoulder, “Mister, do you know where the Free of Eden Trustee Savings Bank is? I want to go get some money.”

“It’s at the centre, just underneath the largest Ferris Wheel, our final stop is also there.” The driver responded cordially, “But you don’t need the bank if you want to withdraw money, this place is full of ATMs, there’s more of those here than trash cans. First time here?”

Shao Dongmi carelessly uhm’d and aha’d in reply.

“Then you’re quite lucky, today is the day of rest, you can go see Lady Luck at hall 1 later, that’s what our Free of Eden is famous for.”

Shao Dongmi listened half-paying attention as he examined the surrounding shops. Both sides of the street were lined with glittering shops, like restaurants of all sorts of cuisine, watch shops, dessert shops, luggage and clothing shops. Among these businesses, the most numerous were casinos, which could be found every couple of steps. The tourists on the streets were all sorts of ethnicities, making this place looked like some kind of international shopping district.


As he watched, Shao Dongmi suddenly spotted a sneaky figure in the crowd. He crouched among the sea of people and travelled through its most crowded spot, then, seeing a suitable target, he sneakily stretched out a hand towards a tourist’s unzipped bag.

What a coincidence, it was the man who had impersonated Liu Hao yesterday.


Shao Dongmi suddenly leapt down from the bus, but was then blocked by the crowd. He didn’t dare make too big a move, so he could only anxiously push the crowd apart as he rushed to the spot he’d seen, but the tourist and Liu Hao had long since disappeared without a trace into the sea of people.

Shao Dongmi jumped up on a stone statue by the side of the road and looked around a few times, but didn’t find anything.

However, he did see an ice cream truck.

He bought a plain ice cream cone that tasted faintly of vanilla and milk, it was silky soft in his mouth and perfectly sweet, so it was quite tasty, and the flavour was no worse than that of those famous name brand ice creams in Yinjiang that cost hundreds of yuan for one little tub. It also completely lacked that strange astringent taste that all of Augustus’ food seemed to have.

The surprising thing was that it was also quite cheap, only one yuan.


It’s—it’s indeed a great place. Shao Dongmi guiltily thought.

Am I being corrupted? Shao Dongmi guiltily bought two more ice cream cones.


Shao Dongmi crouched on the steps of the musical fountain as he finished eating his three cones, then got up and seriously looked around a few more times.

He didn’t know if he was mistaken or not, but he felt like there had been eyes staring at him all this time. The surrounding crowd of people, however, was really so vast that he couldn’t tell if he was sensing wrong.


Guided by the map as he followed the road, Shao Dongmi found the dazzling logo of the Free of Eden Trustee Savings Bank. He had to cross over half of the building, where there were countless noisy gambling tables and ATM machines every few steps.

Every now and then, men wearing suits or women with long legs and black pantyhose would step forward to drag him towards a gambling table to play, asking him whether or not he wanted to get some tokens. They blocked his way carrying several brightly coloured small plastic tokens with numbers engraved on them, making his originally long walk even more difficult.

Finally he reached the bank doors at the depths of the building, which were covered with loan advertisements that read “Immediate deposit! No collateral needed!”. The place was bustling as far as the eye could see, with wave after wave of people rushing off to sell loans, saying that they also came with hotel suite services and that if one bought a loan right now they would get an extra breakfast and swimming voucher.


I really want to lock all these people up.

Shao Dongmi, who had never experienced such humiliation, thought despairingly as he was dragged and pulled all along the way.


After braking through and making his way to the front desk, Shao Dongmi showed the key, and the lady at the front desk immediately arranged for an attendant to lead the way.

Shao Dongmi opened his mouth to ask whether the bank knew personal information of the people using their services, and the lady at the front desk confidently replied: “You don’t need any ID to use this service, and we definitely won’t check anything stored inside. You can rest assured, all your information will remain absolutely confidential.”

Shao Dongmi rolled his eyes in anger, it could be seen that this was a place for conducting shady exchanges.


Shao Dongmi followed the attendant towards the inside of the bank and got inside an elevator. They went down three floors, and he felt like the decoration style of the place had changed all of a sudden.

The bright scarlet carpet and the large marble pillars where nowhere to be seen, he was surrounded by cold grey metal. The attendant led him through a long corridor, stopping in front of a thick, heavy metal door with the letter “F” written on it. The attendant leading the way walked through a door with a series of security authentications, including fingerprint and retina scanners and a password keypad, and it was only after all of these that the metre-thick metal door opened slowly.

“Please go in, dear guest.” The attendant bowed deeply, remaining outside of the door.


Inside was a storage room like that of a bank vault, the room had a high domed ceiling, the space was very wide, and every wall was covered with cabinets of all sizes, each one marked with a number and whether it was occupied or not, and one could even configure the temperature and humidity level individually.

The ceiling levelled off as if it had been cut by a knife, and it had no unnecessary decorations, so it could be seen at a glance that there were no security cameras here.

Shao Dongmi quickly found the cabinet with his number, it was about one metre long.

He drew in a breath, feeling nervous like a spy about to make contact.

He’d been working for so long, but this was the first time he’d done anything behind Yan Chenli’s back, and he was really suffering too much.


He smoothly opened the safe deposit box, inside of which lay a black bag. It was large, almost one metre long, and it looked like the kind of shoulder bag people who went to the gym often carried.

If this was a movie, one the three main classic things he would find once he pulled open the zipper would be: a human head, a bomb, or cash.

In any case, it would be fine as long as it wasn’t Captain Yan’s head. Shao Dongmi thought. Yan Chenli was too much like that wise mentor character who would die on the third episode, and he kept wondering whether he was playing the main character in the third episode or not.


Shao Dongmi weighted the bag, it seemed a little heavy, but not as heavy as metal. The volume and weight of it made it seem more like something made out of paper…

Cash?

How much money would be inside such a big bag? Enough to buy two large riverside villas at Yinjiang’s city centre?

That’s a pretty generous move, unfortunately you chose the wrong guy. Shao Dongmi was secretly planning on how he was going to say “Take back your ridiculous reward, I don’t want your dirty money” as he rejected that megalomaniac.


When he pulled open the zipper, he saw a lot of paper items inside, but it wasn’t cash.

There were neatly stacked piles of things inside the bag: document boxes, a few CDs, glass bottles, soda cans, etc. The CDs had been privately recorded, they came in blank plastic packages without any official markings, just dates and serial numbers written on the covers. Each glass bottle and aluminium can had been individually wrapped inside plastic bags.

Shao Dongmi was all too familiar with these kinds of things, and he instantly understood.

This was an extremely detailed bag of evidence.


The documents were purchase records for electroplating materials of a certain company, among which was an order for chromic acid¹, as well as the records of when a man called Samuel Charles was hired and when he left the company. In addition to this the documents also contained a large amount of victim records, which were detailed accounts of the time, place, and what the victims had gone through. Moreover, the number of victims wasn’t the dozens of people the police had identified before, there were more than one hundred documented cases here.

The documents stated that the CDs contained surveillance footage of the criminal as he committed the crime, as well as the recording of a confession he’d made while in private conversation. The glass bottles were the stolen chromic acid², the canned drinks were poisoned tools which had been used in the failed crimes, and the criminal’s fingerprints could be found in all of them.

This bag contained all the evidence from that coffee-poisoning case ten years ago.


Attached to the document in his hand were also a few pictures recording the criminal’s change in appearance during different time periods. Shao Dongmi discovered that the poisoner had been that fat middle aged man he’d taken into custody back to the Tribunal yesterday, the one Yan Chenly interrogated for five hours without a single result.


Fuck.

Shao Dongmi thought, damn, this really is something I want!


Aside from this, there was also a single envelope inside the bag. The envelope was black and sealed with a crimson wax seal that had the image of an inverted five-pointed star and a goat’s head pressed onto it. It was exactly the same as the envelope where he’d found the key before.

Inside the envelope was the same old second-hand cellphone.

Shao Dongmi tried it out and the cellphone quickly turned on, it still had over half its battery left. The contents of the cellphone were still a mess, there were selfies and pictures of landscapes and food, and the contacts list was filled with numbers for bakers, drivers, bottled water deliveries, etc., etc.

Shao Dongmi stared fixedly at the screen, unmoving.


One minute passed.

Two minutes passed.

Three minutes passed.


The screen suddenly lit up, and the ringing of the phone echoed in the empty room.

The incoming call in front of him displayed the name: Kevin Lomax.

This is a fan translation posted to title-in-progress.dreamwidth.org. Support the author if you can.