Chapter 203: The Black Boxes

He Yu supported me as we walked to the aft cabin. It was a storage area for miscellaneous items. He began moving the heavy crates aside one by one, then somehow produced a folding stool from nowhere. Pointing at it, he ordered me to sit down.

The blood on my nose had already dried, mostly staining my collar. Lu Ayao had given me some medicine to take the moment we arrived, but he was immediately detained in the main cabin. They seemed to need him urgently, though they didn’t have much use for me.

He Yu handed me a clean towel to wipe my face, then set to work shifting the various boxes and crates. As he moved them, he grumbled, “I’m telling you, you were too impulsive back there. We’re still on Gan Rong’s boat. If she gets angry, she might not throw us overboard to feed the fish, but at the very least, what if she stops feeding us? What then?”

After my outburst, the tightness in my chest had actually dissipated. Having finally vented my frustrations, I felt much better. I leaned back against the stool and wiped the blood away with the towel. “This day was coming sooner or later. This way, at least she won’t give you two a hard time for a while.”

The words had barely left my mouth when I heard a loud clatter. I looked back and saw that He Yu had somehow lost his footing and tumbled right onto a pile of crates.

“How do you manage to fall over just moving boxes?” I stood up quickly and circled around to the back, bending down to offer him a hand.

He remained motionless atop the pile, silently catching my eye and giving me a pointed look. I glanced at him, then wordlessly squatted down where I was to examine the crates he had crushed. They were empty. When He Yu had sat on them, they had simply buckled.

Why was the cargo hold filled with empty boxes? I looked around and kicked a few other crates. They rang hollow; they were almost certainly empty as well. I reached out and pulled He Yu up from the floor.

As he scrambled up, something caught my eye beneath where he had been sitting. It was a large black box. Tucked deep within the hold, hidden behind the facade of ordinary empty crates, were dozens of these black boxes. It appeared the empty crates were merely a screen to conceal them.

I stepped deeper into the hold and touched one of the black boxes, frowning. They were covered in a layer of white residue that flaked off onto the floor at the slightest touch.

“Salt?” He Yu asked, leaning in.

I shook my head, picking up a few white granules and rubbing them between my fingers. A streak of moisture appeared on my skin. “It’s not salt. It’s snow.”

“Snow?” He Yu reached out to touch a box himself.

It was too dark to see clearly. I gauged the size of the top box and patted He Yu’s shoulder. “Come on, help me. Let’s haul this out and take a closer look.”

Grunting with effort, He Yu and I scrambled over the empty crates and lugged the topmost black box out, dropping it onto the floor. I didn’t know what was inside, but despite its modest size, it was incredibly heavy.

He Yu sat back down on the stool, complaining, “So heavy. What’s in here? Look, there’s no label or anything. It might even be contraband. You really should ask your mom about this. Does she even know?”

I knelt to examine the brass lock on the black box, my heart sinking. I’d been so agitated earlier that I’d forgotten to bring my bag from the cabin. I couldn’t force the lock; if I broke it and couldn’t put it back together, we’d be in trouble.

Just as the thought crossed my mind, He Yu tossed a bag toward me with a metallic jingle. I barely caught it and realized it was my backpack. The gloom clouding my mind instantly vanished.

“I’ve been holding onto it for you. If I’d waited for you to remember, the trail would have gone cold long ago.”

I pulled out my tools, inserted them into the lock, and gave a sharp tug in a specific direction. The brass lock clicked open. He Yu leaned over curiously as I flipped the lid. With a sharp creak, the box opened, revealing even more snow inside. A puff of white vapor drifted out, and I saw a row of ice axes and shovel heads packed tightly together.

He Yu picked up a shovel head and gave it a couple of experimental swings. “I thought it would be something exotic. It’s just this junk? Don’t tell me the boxes in the back are all filled with this stuff.”

I reached into the open box to feel around. After searching for a while, I found nothing but ice axes and shovel heads. Every piece was frozen solid, some even stuck to the sides of the box so firmly I couldn’t pull them loose. After a moment, the cold became unbearable for my bare hands.

There was no climate control on this boat. I suspected these boxes had been brought from a much colder place and loaded onto the ship, where they were hidden here. Once the boat docked, they would be moved off quietly.

I stared at the crate of cold tools, unable to fathom why anyone would go to such lengths to hide them. After thinking for a moment, I decided to keep looking. Perhaps there was information hidden beneath the tools.

Just as I was about to reach back in, the aft cabin door was suddenly pushed open. He Yu and I both bolted upright, staring at the newcomer. Seeing it was Lu Ayao, we both exhaled in relief. Lu Ayao looked at us, then silently surveyed the cargo hold.

I followed his gaze. We hadn’t noticed in our excitement, but the floor was now covered in puddles of melted snow. We had made a complete mess of the hold.

He Yu felt no guilt whatsoever about the state of the room. He went over, pulled Lu Ayao inside, closed the door, and explained what we had found.

Lu Ayao frowned as he listened, then looked at the two of us. I nodded to confirm He Yu wasn’t exaggerating. He hesitated, glancing at the crate full of ice axes. “This is suspicious,” he said. “Open the other boxes.”

He Yu sighed. “Is that really necessary? I weighed two of the others just now. Aside from the dimensions being different, the weight feels about the same. Those two are probably full of the same junk.”

I ignored him and walked over to two long crates stacked together. I opened the brass locks one by one and heaved the lid of the second box open. Inside were frozen gloves and trekking poles. However, these items had clearly been used; they were worn and battered.

“See, what did I tell you!” He Yu walked over to my side and shrugged. “Let me open it, let me open it. The last big one!”

He and Lu Ayao went up together to lift the second crate down. I took a step back to give them space. The lid of the final crate was heavy; He Yu, being the strongest, spat into his palms, rolled up his sleeves, rubbed his hands together, and wrenched the lid open in one swift motion.

The two of them froze simultaneously at the sight of the contents. I stood on my tiptoes, trying to get a better look, but they blocked my view so completely that not a single gap remained. My heart sank, sensing that this crate probably didn’t contain anything special either.

“If there’s nothing in there, let’s just get out. Maybe they’re just ordinary crates and we’re overthinking it,” I said.

He Yu cursed under his breath. “This is getting goddamn eerie.”

I don’t know which word flipped He Yu’s switch, but as soon as he finished cursing, he suddenly turned around and brushed past me. His face was deathly pale as he began frantically moving the other crates in the cargo hold. Watching his movements, I quickly understood his intent – he was stacking the crates toward the door. He was barricading us in.

My heart skipped a beat. My first reaction was to stride over and see exactly what was in that crate. The white mist had mostly dissipated by now, revealing a crate full of snow. Lu Ayao was using a small trowel to dig through the contents buried beneath the white powder. I felt it clearly – it was a person.

It was a frozen corpse. The body had been dismembered at every joint, hacked into small pieces and stuffed into the snow. Due to the temperature, there were no signs of rot. It was impossible to tell how long the person had been dead.

Expressionless, Lu Ayao first unearthed a leg with his trowel, then a wrist, followed by feet and fingers. Standing behind him, watching him work was a soul-shaking experience. I found myself unable to speak.

Lu Ayao stopped halfway through. He turned and handed me the trowel. “The head should be pressed down at the very bottom,” he said. “I need to reach in and find it by hand.”

“The very bottom?”

He didn’t wait for my answer before plunging his hands into the black crate. I watched with wide eyes as his hands churned through the snow, churning up the legs and arms from the upper layers. I felt a surge of relief that the body was frozen; if it hadn’t been, the smell would have been beyond description, and I would likely be retching my guts out by now.

Lu Ayao’s movements paused. I realized instantly that he must have found the head.

However, he didn’t immediately pull it out to show me. Instead, he pulled his hands back, knit his brows tightly, and whispered, “This is bad. We have a problem.”

I had never seen him look so serious. He looked as if this dismembered corpse might jump out and turn into a restless spirit at any second. Frightened by his expression, I looked up and asked, “W-what’s wrong? Is there something wrong with the head?”

He stepped aside to let me see for myself. I shuffled forward. He had placed the head upright on the surface of the snow. Its eyes were tightly shut, the face ashen and aged. Much of the frost on the skin had melted. One look at that face and all my thoughts ground to a halt; I stood frozen as if time itself had stopped.

I had made many mental preparations before looking at that head. I expected a hideous grimace, or perhaps a face that had reached a high state of decay before being frozen. Any of those would have been within my limit of endurance. But I hadn’t expected the problem to lie not with the state of the head itself, but with something else entirely.

I recognized this face. I had seen him countless times, spoken to him, and he had even smiled at me before. There was absolutely no possibility of me being mistaken!

Tian Xiao.

Lying in this black crate was the very same Tian Xiao I had met before.

My first instinct wasn’t to pick up the head for a closer look, but to call Tian Xiaoqi immediately and tell her that I’d found her goddamn great-great-grandfather. But that was just a momentary impulse; what followed was a long, heavy silence.

This time, Lu Ayao went back to help barricade the door while He Yu came over to take a look. He stared at the head for a full ten minutes, his mouth hanging so wide his jaw looked ready to drop off. “This… this… this… this is way too much of a s-s-surprise! No, it’s goddamn terrifying!”

I reached out and pushed his jaw back up to close his mouth. A headache was starting to form. “It seems the other two crates were just a cover for this one. Let’s close the lid for now. If that snow melts, we’re going to have a real mess on our hands.”