Nightingale Play 1.4
Director Xu Changping's fingers were trembling.
He stared at the rough hemp rope on the table, the smell of rosin making his nose sting – it was all too familiar. In the 1960s, actors would always handle the rope prop like this before going on stage to prevent slipping.
"This is no joke..." His voice was hoarse as he ran his fingertips along the dark brown stains on the rope. "This is Cheng Xue's technique. When she was performing King Lear, she insisted on using real rosin for Cordelia's hanging scene."
Li Weimian used tweezers to lift the end of the rope: "There's dandruff tissue; the murderer rubbed it by hand." She suddenly wrapped the rope around her neck and gestured, "The length is just right to hang from the stage chandelier to the first row of the audience."
The monitor screen suddenly flashed red, and Wen Lin's shout exploded from the walkie-talkie: "There are fuses hidden under all the seats! The trigger devices are connected to—"
After a jarring electrical crackling, Jiang Zhaoyan's voice cut in: "—It even connected to the antique chandelier I just bought. What a waste."
At 7:30 p.m., Jiang Zhaoyan stood in the center of the stage adjusting his cufflinks.
He was wearing a three-piece suit tonight, with a small silver mask pin on his lapel—exactly the same brooch Cheng Xue wore at her curtain call thirty years ago. The lights poured down on him, casting his shadow long, twisted into a cross shape.
"The wiring under all eight hundred seats has been removed?" He chuckled into his invisible earpiece. "Then the killer will have to come and close the net himself."
Suddenly, the sound of rustling papers turning came from the second row.
All the audience members had already left, but a woman had somehow appeared in that row of seats. She was looking down at the script, a few strands of gray hair hanging down from her wide-brimmed hat, her thin fingers repeatedly stroking the "Act Three: The Trial" section.
"Teacher Cheng," Jiang Zhaoyan addressed him in a theatrical tone, "your revised ending was too cliché."
The woman slowly raised her head, revealing a face painted with oil paint beneath the brim of her hat—exaggerated peach-blossom cheeks drawn on a pale base, and an eternal smile sewn into the corners of her mouth with red thread.
"Shh—" She put her index finger to her lips, but her voice was that of a young woman, "The show is about to begin."
When Fan Jinci kicked open the emergency exit door, the chandelier had already crashed onto the stage.
Jiang Zhaoyan's tie was hanging from the broken steel cable, but he was nowhere to be seen. Amidst the shattered glass, only the silver mask's lapel pin still gleamed.
"A ventilator." Fan Jinci suddenly squatted down, his fingertips tracing the clear liquid in the cracks of the floor. "Sepoflurane, a concentration enough to knock out a cow."
The sound of fabric rubbing could be heard from the last row of the audience seats.
Cheng Xue—or rather, the murderer dressed in her costume.
—They were dragging the unconscious Jiang Zhaoyan toward the fire escape. The young man's expensive suit jacket was pulled off, revealing a bulletproof vest he had worn beforehand underneath, with a rope already around his neck.
"Don't come any closer!" The killer's voice suddenly changed to that of an elderly man. He tore open the gun, revealing the face of Zhou Zheng, the son of the mechanic Lao Zhou. "I'm going to complete my father's ritual!"
Li Weimian suddenly raised her phone, and the screen showed newly declassified surveillance footage—on the night of the 1989 fire, Xu Changping personally pushed Cheng Xue down the elevator shaft, while Lao Zhou silently locked the shaft cover.
"Your father was an accomplice," she said calmly. "Now you are too."
The rope suddenly tightened.
Zhou Zheng frantically pulled the mechanism hidden in the wall, and Jiang Zhaoyan's body was suddenly hoisted into the air. The instant Yu Yan's bullet pierced the pulley, Fan Jinci had already rushed forward—
The scalpel sliced through the air, precisely cutting the hemp rope.
As Jiang Zhaoyan fell into his arms, she pulled out a miniature electrode from her sleeve and inserted it directly into Zhou Zheng's carotid artery.
"A brainwave jammer?" Fan Jinci frowned as he examined the electrodes, staring at the convulsing assailant who had collapsed. "This is military-grade—"
"A little toy the Jiang family is researching." Jiang Zhaoyan coughed, loosening his collar to reveal fresh marks on his collarbone. "Now, Brother Fan, can you give me a full-body checkup?"
Yu Yan pressed the barrel of his gun against his temple: "You knew who the murderer was all along."
"Of course." Jiang Zhaoyan smiled and pulled out the script page with hair stuck to it.
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