The morning light that crept through Fang Zhe's blinds was the colour of weak tea—pale, watery, and stained with the residue of a sleepless night. He had not moved from his desk since the anonymous call, his eyes fixed on the photograph of General Gu's crimson stroke as if it might dissolve into a confession if he stared long enough. His coffee had gone cold hours ago, and the cigarette he had lit at 4 a.m. had burned itself out in the ashtray, leaving a crooked tower of ash that collapsed when he finally shifted in his chair.
He was thirty-eight years old, but the mirror in his office told him he looked fifty. Deep lines bracketed his mouth, and his temples had begun to silver in a way that his wife Mei found distinguished but he found merely fatiguing. Their marriage had survived eighteen years of late nights, missed anniversaries, and the slow erosion of intimacy that comes when one partner spends more time with the dead than the living. Mei had stopped asking him to come home for dinner. She had stopped asking him anything at all, except, on rare occasions, whether he remembered to eat.
Fang rubbed his eyes and reached for the telephone. He dialled Zhao's extension, and the junior officer picked up on the first ring—a sign that he, too, had been working through the night.
"Anything on Xu Wei?" Fang asked.
"Not yet, sir. He vanished from his rented room three weeks ago. Landlord says he left most of his belongings—clothes, books, a rice cooker. Took only a canvas bag and a wooden box that he always kept locked. No one's seen him since. We've put out a BOLO, but he's not a fugitive, just a missing person. Without a warrant for arrest, we can't do much."
Fang frowned. "His family? Friends?"
"Orphan. Grew up in a state home in Sichuan. No known relatives. He studied under Lin Yuan for two years, then had a falling-out—according to Lin's statement, Xu became obsessed with the idea of 'performance art as social surgery.' Lin tried to rein him in, but Xu stopped coming to classes. That was about six weeks ago."
"Performance art as social surgery," Fang repeated. The phrase nestled in his mind like a burr. "Get me Lin Yuan's complete statement. And put a surveillance detail on Deputy Mayor Chen Guangli's residence. I want eyes on that house twenty-four hours a day. The anonymous caller said there would be six more strokes. If that's true, the next target is likely someone in power. Chen fits the profile—he was Gu's protégé, and he's been involved in several land-reform scandals that never made it to court."
Zhao hesitated. "Sir, surveillance on a sitting deputy mayor requires approval from the provincial director. We can't just—"
"Then get the approval. I'll handle the paperwork. Just do it."
Fang hung up before Zhao could protest further. He knew he was pushing boundaries, but the case had a momentum of its own, a gravitational pull that made bureaucratic niceties feel like obstacles rather than procedures. He grabbed his coat and headed for the parking lot, determined to visit Lin Yuan's studio again.
The drive to the riverfront district took thirty minutes through morning traffic that had already congealed into a brown serpent of honking taxis and rattling buses. Huahai was a city in transition, its old neighbourhoods of courtyard houses and sycamore trees being bulldozed to make way for glass towers and shopping malls that sold Italian leather and French perfume. The transformation had happened with bewildering speed—a decade of breakneck growth that had lifted millions out of poverty but had also bred a class of nouveaux riches who wore their wealth like battle scars. General Gu had been one of their architects; Deputy Mayor Chen was their current champion.
Fang parked across the street from Lin's warehouse and walked to the steel door. This time, there was no answer. He banged his fist against the metal, and the hollow echo suggested the building was empty. He tried the handle—locked. Through a grimy window, he could see the covered canvas still dominating the studio, but the racks of brushes had been rearranged, and a new easel stood in the corner, holding a smaller painting that he could not quite make out.
He was about to leave when a woman emerged from the neighbouring building—a laundress in her sixties, her hands wrinkled from years of hot water and bleach. She squinted at Fang with the suspicion that old neighbourhood women reserve for strangers in official coats.
"Looking for the painter?" she asked.
"Yes. Do you know where he is?"
"Left yesterday evening with a suitcase. Said he was going to the countryside—something about needing fresh air for his lungs. But I saw him get into a black sedan with tinted windows. Not a taxi. A private car. Didn't look like any official plate I know, but I'm no expert." She spat onto the pavement. "That man is trouble. Always has been. Those paintings of his—they're not art, they're curses. Bad luck follows them."
Fang thanked her and returned to his car. Lin Yuan had fled—or at least, he had removed himself from immediate reach. That could mean guilt, or it could mean fear. Either way, it deepened the mystery.
He spent the afternoon at the bureau, sifting through Lin Yuan's file. The artist had been born in a small village in Jiangxi, orphaned at seven, and raised by a distant uncle who had been a calligraphy master. Lin had shown prodigious talent early, winning national competitions by the age of twelve. He had studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, where his professors had praised his "emotional restraint" and "technical perfection." But his later works—the banned portraits—had revealed a sardonic, almost nihilistic view of power. He had painted the party secretary as a bloated goldfish, the finance minister as a locust, and the police chief as a blindfolded monkey holding a club. The symbolism was unmistakable, and the censors had pounced.
Yet Lin had never been charged with sedition. His connections—the children of the very officials he mocked—had protected him. They collected his works as investments and status symbols, and they had lobbied quietly to keep him out of prison. Fang found this hypocrisy both familiar and nauseating. The powerful were always willing to tolerate a little criticism if it came in a gilt frame.
At 6 p.m., Zhao called with disturbing news. "Sir, the surveillance team just reported. Deputy Mayor Chen left his residence at 5:15 for a dinner meeting at the Golden Lotus Hotel. He arrived, entered the private dining room, and hasn't come out. But the team noticed something odd—a delivery man carrying a large flat package, wrapped in brown paper, went into the hotel about ten minutes after Chen. The package was about the size of a painting."
Fang's blood chilled. "Get a team to the hotel. I'm on my way."
The Golden Lotus Hotel was a sprawling five-star establishment on Huahai's newest boulevard, its lobby a cathedral of polished marble and crystal chandeliers. Fang flashed his badge at the front desk and demanded the location of Chen's private dining room. The manager, a nervous man in a burgundy blazer, led him to the second floor, where two of Fang's officers were already stationed outside a mahogany door.
"Any movement?" Fang asked.
"No, sir. The deputy mayor's bodyguards are inside, but they haven't responded to our knocks. The delivery man came out empty-handed about twenty minutes ago—we detained him in the service elevator. He says he was just delivering a framed print to a Mr. Liu, but we found no Liu registered in the hotel."
Fang pushed the door open.
The room was a sumptuous den of silk wallpaper and rosewood furniture, a round table laden with uneaten delicacies—lobster, abalone, a steaming pot of bird's nest soup. Deputy Mayor Chen Guangli sat at the head of the table, his fleshy face turned toward the window, his hands folded on the white linen cloth. He wore a tailored grey suit and a gold watch that glittered under the soft lighting. But his eyes were open, glassy, and utterly vacant. Across his chest, in the same vivid crimson, ran a second brushstroke—identical in curvature and pressure to the first, but slightly longer, as if the artist had grown bolder with practice.
And pinned to his lapel, another square of rice paper: "第二笔"—the second stroke.
Fang approached the body with a leaden heart. No visible wounds, no blood. The paint was still wet. The killer had been here within the last hour, in a hotel packed with diners and security cameras, and had somehow walked in, painted a deputy mayor, and walked out without a sound.
"This is impossible," Zhao whispered from the doorway. "We had the place under surveillance. How did he get past the cameras?"
Fang did not answer. He was staring at the wall behind Chen's chair, where a new element had been added. A small mirror—round, about the size of a dinner plate—had been hung on the silk wallpaper, angled so that it reflected the dying man's face. And written on the mirror in lipstick, or perhaps in red paint, were four characters: "你看见了吗?"—"Do you see?"
Fang felt the room tilt. He steadied himself against the table, his palm landing in a pool of cold soup. The killer was not just performing art—he was performing a dialogue. He was speaking to the investigator, drawing him into the frame, making him a participant in the ritual.
The delivery man, when interrogated, proved to be a decoy. The package he carried had contained a cheap landscape print, nothing more. He had been hired by a voice on the phone, paid in cash, and told to deliver it to a non-existent Mr. Liu. The real canvas—the crimson stroke—had already been in the room before Chen arrived.
Fang reviewed the hotel's security footage. The corridor cameras showed a blur of motion—a figure in a dark coat, face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat, carrying a flat case. The figure entered the dining room at 5:20, exited at 5:23, and vanished into the service stairwell. The cameras in that stairwell had been disabled—their cables cut with surgical precision. The killer had known the hotel's layout, the camera positions, the timing of the security patrols. This was not a spontaneous act; it was a orchestration that had taken weeks, perhaps months, to plan.
He called Lin Yuan's number. It rang twice, then went to voicemail. Fang left a terse message: "I know you're not in the countryside. Call me, or I'll issue a warrant for your arrest as a material witness."
That night, Fang sat in his office with the two crime-scene photographs side by side. The first stroke—General Gu—was a bold, confident line, a statement of intent. The second stroke—Deputy Mayor Chen—was more fluid, almost playful, as if the artist was loosening up, finding his rhythm. Fang noticed that both strokes ended with a slight upward flick, a signature flourish that reminded him of a signature he had seen before—on a gallery brochure, on a purchase receipt.
Lin Yuan's signature. The same brush technique. The same pressure gradient.
But Lin had an alibi for the first murder—he was at a lecture, with a hundred witnesses. And for the second, he was supposedly travelling to the countryside. But the laundress had seen him get into a black sedan at dusk, which gave him a window. Fang needed more.
He opened Lin's file again and found a list of his students. Xu Wei's name was highlighted. But there was another name, crossed out—a young woman named Su Ling, who had been Lin's assistant for three years and had left abruptly a year ago. Fang made a note to find her.
His phone rang. It was Mei. Her voice was clipped, the way it always was when she had something difficult to say.
"Fang. You missed our anniversary. Again."
He had forgotten. He had forgotten everything except the red strokes.
"I'm sorry," he said, and he meant it, but the words felt hollow, like offerings to a god he no longer believed in.
"I'm not calling to fight," she continued. "I'm calling to tell you that I'm leaving. I've already packed. I'll be staying with my sister for a while. Maybe longer. You need to decide whether you want a wife or a ghost. Because right now, you're chasing one, and you're becoming the other."
She hung up before he could respond. He stared at the receiver, then at the photographs. The red strokes seemed to pulse under the fluorescent light, each one a heartbeat of a dying city.
He would not sleep tonight. He would not sleep for many nights. And somewhere in the shadows, the artist was preparing the third stroke, his brush already dipped in cinnabar, his canvas already chosen.
But Fang was no longer sure that he wanted to stop the performance. A dark part of him—a part he had never acknowledged until now—was eager to see what the next act would bring. The hunter was becoming a connoisseur. And that, he knew with a sinking certainty, was exactly what the killer intended.
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