So he got out, went to pick up the laptop, and moved back to the bed. Leaning back with a couple of pillows propped against the headboard, he placed the laptop above his drawn-up knees, overlooking her moon-blanched face.

He did not start all at once, sitting still, thinking, unaware of time flowing away like waves in the dark.

With her lying against him, the water of the lake made its way into that long poem, with those lines gushing out from his pen, from the lake – all through her.

Working in the attic office overlooking the eatery packed with customers, Peiqin got another short message from Lianping.

‘It’s announced that Zhou has been put into custody as a suspect in Xiang’s murder, but the head of the newspaper also emphasized that it is not an official announcement – not to the outside.’

What did it mean?

She tried to contact Chen on the special number, but he did not pick up. He must have been so busy with the developments in his own investigation.

Her phone call to Yu was not picked up either. Getting more worried, she was debating with herself whether she should make a visit to the police bureau. But she had delivered a basket of Zongzi there just the other day. Besides, she did not even know if he was in the office.

The subsequent scene in the video began. Still in the same dorm building. More than three or four hours later, according to the time recorded in the upper right corner of the image. The dorm room door suddenly opened, and she was slipping out barefoot in a large T-shirt. She was seen looking about, turning right, running toward the other end of the corridor, out of the range of the hidden camera, but in less than five minutes, hurrying back along the corridor and disappearing into the room.

The sequence of the images confused him for a second, but then he got it. Like in most factory dorm buildings, people had to share the public toilet on the same floor. She must have come out of the dorm room, light-footed, while he was still sleeping.

Again, nothing was visible on the tape for a second or two when the door closed after her, except the empty corridor.

It was about two hours later, in the grayness of the early dawn, that the door opened again. This time, it was the man coming out. With the lights out in the corridor, the visibility barely improved, and it presented a rather indistinct image of his heading toward the staircase in a hurry.

There seemed to be nothing graphic going on in that entire section, but the caption popped up:

‘The adulteress spending the whole night with another secret lover in her dorm room.’

All at once, the juxtaposition of the scenes with the time recorded on them made an unequivocal impression, which the audience would most likely accept, perhaps most eagerly too.

That would deliver another devastating blow to Shanshan.