Chapter 54 – It’s a Lotus, Not a Water Lily! (2)
The barber shop owner was forced to accompany Jiang Yujin, whose face was brimming with happiness, to a morning and an afternoon tour around the lotus pond.
Along the way, they completely separated from the majority of the community group. Consequently, they chose to walk on their own, encountering the caretaker of the lotus plants in this area.
The caretaker, inheriting her grandfather’s mantle, was a young girl with a square face, her skin tanned, exuding a cheerful and outgoing demeanor when she smiled.
With two equally outgoing personalities coming together, the caretaker initially intended to share knowledge about lotus plant care. However, as they chatted more, the conversation veered off course, heading toward divergent paths.
While the caretaker tended to the lotus flowers here, this place happened to be a well-known spot for couples’ rendezvous. Every year during the flowering season, she could quietly observe numerous heated romantic dramas.
Couples who had planned to see the lotus flowers together would later claim they couldn’t make it due to various reasons. As a result, they would each show up separately with their other secret lovers, leading to confrontations. Such occurrences were uncommon but happened several times a year, drawing a crowd of onlookers each time.
Citizen Jiang eventually stopped holding grudges against the leading lotus flower after numerous rounds of gossip. Capturing pictures everywhere, carrying an album filled with lotus flowers and a head full of gossip, he returned content.
That night, the high schooler, having finished solving practice papers, unlocked his phone and was greeted by various lotus-related messages from a contact with a lotus flower as his profile picture.
After checking the details, he realized it was his responsible father.
The person had just sent a new message, saying: [It will be better if you are at home].
Though seemingly affectionate on the surface, Chen Jing was sure that the other person just wanted dinner.
Indeed, Citizen Jiang was genuinely hungry. With the high schooler absent, he headed downstairs to the barber shop owner’s house to “chat”.
Anticipating his arrival for a free meal, the barber shop owner wasn’t surprised in the slightest. This person really had a clear goal; after eating and drinking, he’d just head back home to watch soap operas without lingering anywhere.
However, the soap opera today wasn’t very engaging. The plot lacked the thrilling melodrama of previous episodes, causing Citizen Jiang to doze off while watching.
When he woke up the next day, Jiang Yujin found his phone vibrating intermittently on the floor, unsure when it had fallen.
Rubbing his eyes, he bent down to reach for his phone, but in his drowsiness, he accidentally bumped his forehead on the table’s edge. Switching from rubbing his eyes to rubbing his forehead, he let out a slow, hoarse groan before picking up the phone.
There was a message from someone he had casually added while chatting yesterday—the caretaker of the lotus plants. The first line was a request for his help with something.
Beneath the message was a photo of the lotus pond, the same one where he had seen those vibrant lotus flowers yesterday. However, the scene was drastically different now—the once towering lotus leaves and flowers had all withered, turning yellow and decaying. Their wilted stems and leaves hung into the water, yellowing and rotting.
All of this had happened overnight. Last night had seemed perfectly normal—the temperature was just right, the weather favorable. It should have been an ideal night for the lotus flowers, yet what she encountered in the morning shattered her joyful expectations.
She called the local Special Management Unit, but they only promised to record the incident accurately. When she inquired about specific measures or investigation plans, the conversation abruptly ended.
The SMU was an affiliated branch of the Special Investigation Unit, established to handle various anomalies that didn’t require the intervention of the SIU or the investigations mandated by the SIU.
However, even within the matters that didn’t necessitate contacting the SIU, there were degrees of significance. With numerous ongoing issues, her concern about this small pond was evidently treated as insignificant.
Today it was this pond, tomorrow it could be another. The caretaker didn’t want to wait any longer; she wanted to investigate the cause immediately.
They had talked about professions during their chat yesterday, and now the caretaker recalled her new friend’s occupation, prompting her to message him this morning.
Jiang Yujin valued this new acquaintance who seemed to have promising gossip potential, so he got up and set out immediately.
Another reason was that his finances had been a bit tight lately. During this trip to the plateau, the travel agency had provided insurance, but it only covered expenses until the high schooler was discharged from the hospital there. After that, the expenses were on him.
Between buying tickets to the neighboring city with his own money and considering a ride from the barber shop owner downstairs, Jiang Yujin briefly contemplated before knocking on the barber shop owner’s door.
The barber shop owner seemed ready for a fight, but in the end, he didn’t engage. Using his skills, Jiang Yujin managed to convince the barber shop owner to bring the car out.
Having been to the lotus pond yesterday, the barber shop owner had been mostly focused on admiring the scenery along the way. He vaguely remembered some routes from yesterday, plus with the help of a map, their journey went relatively smoothly.
As they approached the city, nearing the signs pointing to the lotus pond, it was rush hour, and the traffic was congested. They took a turn, avoiding the jammed queue of cars, and moved towards a less crowded road.
The lotus pond was located off the urban roads, and they successfully bypassed the morning rush. The girl waited at the entrance of the lotus pond and waved as she saw them.
Yesterday, they had walked a considerable distance from the entrance to the small pond. Today, they retraced the same path without taking any shortcuts, concerned about what might have happened. Until the matter was resolved, the lotus garden remained closed to the public. Today, the only people inside were occasional staff passing by and them.
Not far from the small pond, they could already smell something peculiar.
It was stronger than the odor of decay, persisting relentlessly, almost clinging to their bodies.
Jiang Yujin crouched by the pond, briefly letting his legs, exhausted from the trip, rest. The odor hit his nostrils intensely. He moved back a few steps and turned to the caretaker, asking, “Could this be poisoning?”
To deteriorate like this overnight would require something more than just natural decay.
“I’ve considered that possibility too, so I checked the surveillance footage,” the girl said. “No one approached the lotus plants at night. The wilting started suddenly at some point.”
She was the last person here yesterday, and when she left, the lotus flowers were fine. After her departure, no one else had come by, eliminating the possibility of someone poisoning the plants. Nevertheless, as a precaution, she took samples to be tested.
She asked, “Do you want to check the surveillance?”
The group then went to review the surveillance footage. The surveillance room was located adjacent to the room where tools were usually kept, not too far from their current location.
Having used it before, the retrieval of the surveillance footage was swift this time. The girl adjusted the starting time to when she had left.
Several monitors operated together, covering the entire area around the small pond. The first person captured on the surveillance was the caretaker, checking the pond’s condition before leaving.
The video fast-forwarded, showing no one else after her. From 2:40 AM, the lotus leaves and flowers, previously swaying gently in the evening breeze, began wilting at an incredibly rapid pace, drooping into the pond. Subsequently, they rotted and decayed, turning into an unidentifiable mass.
Jiang Yujin rewound the video to just before the wilting began, his light-colored eyes fixed on the electronic screen, making slight adjustments.
At a certain point in the playback, he slowed down the speed. The caretaker didn’t understand what he was doing and kept her eyes on the screen, without noticing anything unusual.
The barber shop owner, watching alongside, had a slight movement at the corner of his eye when the video reached a particular point.
Jiang Yujin pressed the pause button. Pointing at a spot on the screen, he said, “Pay attention here.”
He pointed at the fine, dark seams between the tiles by the edge of the pond. The caretaker hadn’t realized what was amiss and leaned forward slightly, examining that small area closely.
In a split second, the previously straight lines distorted abruptly, and a black line shot into the pond. The wilting and decay occurred immediately after this event.
This subtle change resembled the occasional interference typical of surveillance cameras, easy to overlook and leave no impression at first glance.
The caretaker glanced at the person sitting beside her, her eyes widening slightly.
Thankfully, this person could really spot these things.
Spotting was one thing; solving it was another. The caretaker asked, “What is this?”
This was somewhat beyond her realm of understanding.
After a brief discussion, they decided to return to the edge of the pond for another look.
This time, the caretaker wore a mask and used a stick, usually employed for retrieving rubbish thrown into the pond by others, to push aside the unpleasant-smelling corpses of the lotus flowers.
Beneath the lotus flowers was originally black silt. She used to periodically check the quality of this silt and noticed a significant change—it had become noticeably thinner and lighter in color.
Jiang Yujin turned and asked, “Are your ponds interconnected?”
“No,” the girl replied, “Each pond has its own maintenance plan and operates independently.”
As if remembering something important, her expression froze, and she suddenly added, “But the irrigation systems are connected; each pond is part of the same system…”
At this point, a troubling suspicion formed in her mind, and her expression turned grim.
“Don’t worry, just asking,” Jiang Yujin said, gesturing toward the thriving lotus flowers, “The others seem to be doing fine.”
Taking the stick from the girl, Jiang Yujin stirred it directly into the silt. When he lifted it, the silt fell away, revealing long, thread-like worm-like creatures on the stick.
Realizing they were exposed to the light, the creatures quickly crawled back into the silt at their previous pace. The silt churned for a moment before returning to its original state.
Wide-eyed, the caretaker finally realized what was in the pond.
“I remember you took samples from the pond for testing,” Jiang Yujin looked at her and asked, “Can you still contact the testing facility?”
Realizing the situation, the girl immediately took out her phone and dialed the number of the testing facility.
As the caretaker left, Jiang Yujin turned to the barber shop owner and asked, “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
The barber shop owner shook his head, at least within his known range of experience, he hadn’t encountered it before.
They had encountered strange species that were light-averse, highly aggressive toward plants, capable of corroding them, and also highly mobile and aggressive nematodes. However, this was the first time they had seen a combination of both.
Supporting himself with his hands, Jiang Yujin circled around the pond and found a small, flat piece of glass near the drainage outlet, barely the size of a fingernail.
The glass was hollow, as if something had been inside, but the screw was loose, and now it was empty.
Jiang Yujin decided to check the surveillance footage again.
This time, he didn’t skip through the previous footage. He started at the moment when the first person entered the lotus garden and watched backward at double speed.
He didn’t have any exceptional abilities, but he was adept at focusing on the essential points. Faces came and went on the surveillance, children ran by holding onto something small, their diminutive figures obscured by the lotus, disappearing and reappearing. Undisturbed by these distractions, his light-colored eyes followed the movements on the screen.
A one-eyed man appeared in the crowd. He didn’t pay much attention to the lotus; his gaze scanned the surrounding people, then he put his hands in his pockets and slowly moved closer to the lotus pond.
Perhaps out of intuition or habit, he glanced around, his gaze passing briefly over the monitors before continuing forward.
Both Jiang Yujin and the barber noticed a slight movement from him. A subtle motion, as if he intended to take his hand out of his pocket but then changed his mind and returned it.
As his hand moved, something fell out of his pocket and rolled on the ground before finally landing in the pond.
After he left, members of the SIU from the neighboring city arrived. It was evident they weren’t here to admire the lotus; their purpose was focused, and they dispersed in the crowd, seemingly searching for someone.
However, they didn’t manage to find the person they were looking for from start to finish. After briefly meeting at the end, they rested a bit and then departed.
Jiang Yujin rewound the video again and pointed at the person on the screen, asking, “Do you know him?”
The barber shop owner, with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, nodded.
