BOOK 2. Zhao Yunlan is a successful detective and has been blind from birth, and is attacked on his way home from a night out but someone steps in and saves him and runs off. Shen Wei is a university lecturer in Architectural Technology and liv...
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Yunlan arrived later on in the afternoon but he could smell the hint of brandy in the office and made a point of talking individually to everyone, trying to work out who the drunk culprit was and eventually when he spoke to da Qing, he smelled it slightly stronger but knew that Da Qing did not drink. That only left one person and usually he didn't drink to that extent, something must have pushed him over the edge, something connected to what he was working on, so he would be lenient unless he found out differently.
"Chu are you there? On my way down." he shouted.
Chu moved to the door to escort him in and Guide Yunlan to a seat, he had so much to tell him, and he had slipped the small book and photos into his pocket bringing them with him.
"Brandy?" Yunlan asked.
"Sorry, not as a rule, but I found a few passages hard to read last night. Have a lot to tell you, I'm not sure where to start."
"Suppose I ask questions and you answer and elaborate if you can?" Yunlan asked.
"Yes, that sounds good." he said.
"Can you confirm definitively with proof that Shen Wei was Black Robe?"
"Yes" Chu answered, "Shen Wei, Da Qing, you and myself all worked on the antidote for a drug used during the war by the enemy, they used it forcefully on unwilling subjects to win the war."
It was now Yunlan's turn to be silent, this is totally not what he was expecting to hear.
"If I played you some of the recording would you be able to recognise what Shen Wei is dreaming about?"
"Yes, possibly." Chu answered him.
Yunlan explained that this recording was taken this week and that he would hear his voice too because he was holding Shen Wei while he was screaming. Chu listened, visibly upset and knowing what it was immediately, he explained to Yunlan as delicately as he could.
"Black Robe was in the middle of a bomb blast, I'll skip over his injuries but he was burnt defending everyone else except himself, and needed to be lowered into an antibacterial soothing bath, and that is what you are hearing, plus you were right beside him all the time and I was giving him treatment and painkillers. Apparently we didn't know that he was Black Robe until we took all his damaged clothes away and the mask saved his eyes and face."
Yunlan now understood why Chu hit the brandy last night, because even though these things happened in another lifetime, he still felt as though it was him.
"Would you like to see his mask?" Chu asked Yunlan who looked surprised and nodded. He walked over and collected it, bringing it back to the table for Yunlan to feel.
"It just feels like plastic to me, open it." Chu wasn't sure if it would disintegrate or not but opened the polythene bag for Yunlan who put his hand in to remove it. A small purple cloud of bubbling gas escaped from the open bag which wrapped itself around Yunlan's hand and evaporated but the mask was intact.
