Love Me if You Dare: Pristine Darkness

2020 is rapidly turning into a year no one wants to remember. I hope you are safe and well, wherever you are. Let’s treat our fellow humans with respect and kindness (anyone remembers ‘Try a Little Kindness’ by Glen Campbell?), and a big ‘thank you’ as always to those who work so hard to keep us safe. 

Bo Jinyan thinks back to the beginnings of the ‘Masked Killer’ (and reminds us all of Fu Ziyu, sob) as he and Jian Yao relook their assumptions on the Masked Killer’s identity and modus operandi. They draw some new conclusions and ponder a key question. Just who is this Masked Killer?

SPOILER NOTICE! The PD team will be running a competition soon with bonus chapters as prizes. You might want to think through all that is revealed about the 5 luohans and BJY’s musings on the Masked Killer/ police officer in these few chapters to get a head start on the competition ?

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The evening breeze blew gently. In the twilight, Bo Jinyan’s face had become hazy. Jian Yao looked into his eyes and her heart jumped silently. However, when he spoke his voice was as low and as firm as before.

“Once, the FBI ascertained the identity of a person suspected to be the masked killer. His name was Jam, 26 years old, blonde, blue eyes, born and raised in America. He had started to commit crimes due to his wife’s death in a medical incident, which caused him to have a deep hatred for medical personnel. The masked killer was dubbed so because he always wore a mask when killing people. His commonly used murder tool was an axe, which corresponded with Jam’s having grown up on a farm . . .”

Jian Yao thought back to several years ago. At that time, she had also read the information on the masked killer.

That was quite a number of years ago.

The masked killer had kidnapped quite a few hostages at the same time and had imprisoned them in a deserted house by the sea. The hostages were all family members of medical personnel, and among them was Fu Ziyu’s childhood sweetheart and fiance, Han Yumeng.

He killed one person a day, right in front of the trapped girls. Incomparable cruelty, incomparable anger, incomparable pain.

Until one day, university student Bo Jinyan took the initiative to offer his assistance to the police, and drew up an accurate profile of the masked killer.

The masked killer probably knew that the end was near. Unbelievably, he posed the girls a difficult problem – he only wanted one person, a volunteer, to accompany him as he set off to sea, towards life or death. Then, he would release everyone else. Otherwise, all of them would die.

Han Yumeng stepped forward.

The two of them sailed out to sea. After that, the police launched a full-scale pursuit and finally found a shipwreck. They thereby concluded that the pair had run into a storm at sea, from which there was virtually no chance of survival. Case closed.

From that time, Fu Ziyu had lived a kind of weary half-life.

Until Han Yumeng and the masked killer returned together.

……

Jian Yao looked up at Bo Jinyan in fear, but heard his voice, like clear river water, saying, “Right now, we can overturn all the conclusions we have drawn on the masked killer.”

The night air was tinged with cold, and only the two of them were along the long river bank. Jian Yao held his hand tightly; both of their hands were cold. She pulled at his hand so that they both sat down on the pebble-strewn river bank. No one could overhear their conversation, only the river murmured as it flowed past.

“When he returned last year, he brought a helper. This is contrary to what the FBI have all along maintained about him committing crimes alone. This can also explain how he and Han Yumeng were able to be rescued when they encountered the big storm at sea and their boat sank — because, from the very beginning, it wasn’t him committing the crimes by himself, but a good number of people.

The second point of doubt is that he always wore a mask while committing crimes in America. If he only wanted revenge for himself, if he had already prepared from the start to flee to the furthest reaches of the world and for his identity to be quickly ascertained by the police — then why did he still wear a mask? Not even a single survivor had seen his actual face. What was he trying to hide?” Bo Jinyan continued to ask rhetorically.

“In order to . . .” Jian Yao looked into his eyes, “conceal his identity.”

“Yes. But why cover up the fact that a gang had committed the crimes? Always making the police think that a single person had committed the crimes? Do you still remember the case last year? They set up a sniper maze, they set up passwords and explosives, and they finally confronted me with a difficult choice – saving you or blindness . . . they definitely wanted to exact revenge on me, but they made all of this into a game!”

Jian Yao was dumbstruck, and she was gripped by an icy sensation. But, Bo Jinyan’s expression, as she looked at him, was quiet and cold, like a sculpture.

“Yes,” he said, “a game. No matter if it was the masked killer case from that year, or the previous year’s cases, where they are concerned, it was all just a game, a game played for the world to see, a game for them to look back on and ponder over!”

Jian Yao’s heart jumped in her chest. The surroundings were so quiet, but she alone felt a strange force that was shaking her to the core, mirroring that in Bo Jinyan’s heart, as a result of their impending direct stand-off with the masked killer.

“He has an extreme* psychopathic personality,” she said with certainty.

*T/N Ding Mo inserted a row of asterisks between ‘extreme’ and ‘personality’ in the original text. It’s anyone’s guess as to what was intended! For the purposes of this translation, I will assume it is ‘psychopathic’.

“Indeed.” The corners of Bo Jinyan’s mouth lifted in his usual arrogant chuckle. It was as if he was expressing his hatred for all these savage, brutal criminals. Then, his clear reasoning came through like torrent of river water:

“Let’s call the head of this criminal gang ‘masked killer’ for the time being. He has an extremely psychopathic personality, and has attracted a group of criminals with a similar psychopathic personality. He precisely planned and directed many of the crimes they committed. That year, he was so familiar with criminal organisations that he was able to succeed in crossing the border illegally. Therefore, he cannot be too young; he is at least 30 years old at the present time.

We can confirm that he is male.

That year, many of the female victims in the cases in America were Chinese. In the end, the person he was willing to keep by his side was Han Yumeng. Relatively speaking, the probability of crimes that cross ethnicities is comparatively low. Moreover, my inference is that he is hiding within the organisation of Buddha’s Hand at the moment, and there are no foreigners holding high positions there. Thus, we can infer that he is Chinese. The blonde Jam that was identified that year was only a scapegoat.

In disposition, he is extremely arrogant, cruel, and stubborn, and it is extravagantly clear that he gets his kicks out of toying with people. There is a very high possibility that he enjoys ‘role-playing’; in other words, he has the first signs of schizophrenia.

He probably returned to China several years ago and joined Buddha’s Hand. After committing the crime last year, he once again returned to hide within Buddha’s Hand. This, to him, is a safe place. However, when he joined the organisation, he clearly did not bring his subordinates with him. For one, these small-time gang members would have easily aroused the suspicions of Buddha’s hand; for another, doing so would have exposed his full strength, and also would not square with his attitude of currently relying on Buddha’s Hand while still looking down on these criminals. Thus, he would not have done so.

However, although both he and Xie Han* are high IQ, psychopathic criminals, he falls short of Xie Han by far.”

*T/N Xie Han is the name of the ‘Flower Canninal’, the main villain in the first novel featuring Bo Jinyan and Jian Yao, ‘When He Comes, Close Your Eyes’ (dramatised as ‘Love Me if You Dare’).

On hearing this, Jian Yao was stunned. “Why?”

Very coolly, Bo Jinyan said, “Because there is a timidity deeply hidden in his personality. If you think about it carefully, up till now, he has never confronted me face-to-face. Xie Han, on the other hand, is full of self-confidence and sees himself as an artist of crime. Do you remember, in Hong Kong, how Xie Han’s continuous crime spree was intended to directly provoke me? In contrast, the masked killer appears to make threatening gestures* and has even snared a group of perverted, violent criminals as his accomplices, he imitated Xie Han in setting up challenges for me but, in the end, he used a sneak attack to seriously injure me. In reality, Xie Han is leagues ahead of him.”

*T/N 张牙舞爪 (zhang ya wu zhua) – lit. bare fangs and brandish claws; fig. to make threatening gestures.

Jian Yao felt this was both funny and sad. True, the masked killer really did hide in the shadows. But, what one had to know is that, where the police and law enforcers are concerned, it is not the criminals’ direct provocation they are afraid of, but precisely this kind of person who hides in the shadowy gutter and stabs one in the back. Because justice always walks in the light, but a madman’s knife, or his bullet, suddenly coming from behind, may take the life of a highly regarded, brilliant detective who has solved countless cases.

From that time onward, she only wanted to continue to protect him.

If anyone wanted to kill him, it would be over her dead body.

This is what she was calmly thinking.

Bo Jinyan had not yet observed that the young woman in front of him was deep in thought. As he continued reasoning, his voice even took on something of his usual excitement. He held her hand and put his arm around her shoulders. In this way, anyone spying on them from afar would just think that he was being intimate with his sweetheart. He was really too meticulous and thorough.

He bowed his head and said, softly, “And so, my wifey, do you know what the most crucial point that we have to analyse clearly is?”

Jian Yao looked up at his lower jaw. “What . . . is it?”

“What is he looking for?”