CDJMM – Volume 1 – Chapter 56 Writing in the Republic Era (55)

Lin Zhongqi? Hardcore fan?

Le Jing’s mind flashed with lightning speed as he recalled what Cao Wanying had once said:

“This friend of mine is the strangest Japanese person I’ve ever met. For some reason, he always hated his Japanese identity and constantly dreamed of becoming a citizen of China, to live as a Chinese. Unfortunately, his parents disagreed, so it never happened.”

So… could it be as he thought?

No, that didn’t seem right. If the boy was a transmigrator like him, how could he so casually call out his other pen name? Or was that also just a test?

Could it be…?

Better to test first.

“Lin Zhongqi?” Le Jing gave Cao Wanying a glance, and asked doubtfully, “Did your friend mistake me for someone else? I’m not Lin Zhongqi.”

“And what does hardcore fan mean?”

After a brief daze, Cao Wanying also looked puzzled. “What are you talking about? Weren’t you the one who said you wanted to meet the Watchman? I went through the trouble of calling him here, and now you’re calling him Lin Zhongqi?”

A flicker of panic—of having let something slip—flashed across the Japanese boy’s eyes, but under the suspicious gazes of Le Jing and Cao Wanying, he forced himself to remain calm. With a dry laugh, he said:

“Slip of the tongue, slip of the tongue, my apologies. Just now my mind was wandering, thinking about the latest developments in The Rise of the Dynasty. Seeing Mr. Watchman, I got too excited and accidentally called out the wrong name. As for hardcore fan… also a slip of the tongue. My Chinese still isn’t very good…”

Le Jing watched his flustered explanation with cold eyes. When the boy finished speaking, he only nodded slightly, smiling as he asked:

“And how should I address you?”

The Japanese boy froze, realizing he hadn’t introduced himself yet. He quickly bowed deeply and said:

“Forgive me, I’m Nakamura Ryota, currently studying at Qilin Middle School. Ever since I read your Fengtian Locked-Room Murder Case in the newspaper, I’ve admired you greatly. That’s why I asked Miss Cao Wanying to make an introduction. If I have been presumptuous, I hope you can forgive me.”

Qilin Middle School was also a prestigious school in Beiping, though a bit far from Enlightenment Middle School.

This Japanese boy’s Chinese was fluent, but his word choice and phrasing carried the distinct politeness and distance of the Japanese language, his sentences reflecting Japanese habits. Even if he were a Chinese transmigrator, his thinking had already been assimilated into Japanese culture.

And… to say he had admired him since Fengtian Locked-Room Murder Case? That went back quite a while. That work was first published in newspapers in the northeast. Could it be that he had lived in the northeast before?

“Oh no, you’re too polite. I’m glad to meet a Japanese reader…” Le Jing exchanged pleasantries while secretly probing for more information.

From this he learned that Nakamura Ryota had met Cao Wanying through their fathers. When Cao Wanying’s father had studied in Japan, he and Nakamura’s father had been classmates. So when Nakamura Ryota came alone to China to study, he stayed with the Cao family.

He also noticed the strange way Nakamura looked at him.

Certainly, Nakamura admired him—this was obvious from his expressions and gestures.

But it was too much.

The way he looked at him was as if gazing at some great figure immortalized in a museum statue.

This was their very first meeting, and yet he seemed to know him so well. The occasional flashes of familiarity in his expression were far too strange.

All of this seemed to confirm his suspicions.

This boy was very likely a transmigrator, someone from a future altered by his actions.

The so-called “self-correction of history” hadn’t taken effect—history really had been changed by him.

Of course, it was also possible that when he transmigrated into this era, history had already split into an independent parallel world. In that case, his actions would only alter this parallel future, leaving the original world unaffected.

All of this was speculation. The truth depended on Nakamura Ryota’s answers.

So Le Jing extended an invitation:

“It’s getting late. Why don’t we grab a meal nearby? That way we can have a proper talk.”

Nakamura Ryota’s face flushed red with excitement. He nodded furiously and stammered:

“Y-Yes, of course! If it’s not too much trouble, I’d be more than happy!”

…

…

It turned out to be a thoroughly pleasant banquet. Le Jing and Nakamura Ryota chatted and laughed, the atmosphere lively and cheerful.

Taking advantage of the mood, Le Jing casually steered the conversation toward the plot of The Rise of the Dynasty.

Le Jing smiled as if nothing were amiss:

“Great Hua is truly in turmoil. Natural disasters already abound, the people live in misery, and now even the emperor has been captured by the northern barbarians. I wonder if Xu Wangmu will be able to rescue him.”

Without realizing it, Nakamura Ryota followed along:

“Of course he can. In my view, Xu Wangmu will…”

He had been ready to expound at length, but when he saw the unmasked shock in Le Jing’s smile, a sense of wrongness struck him. The warm atmosphere of the meal instantly shattered, his brain snapping back to clarity.

Remembering Le Jing’s question, his face drained of color.

The handsome youth across from him put away his surprise, expressionless now as he asked softly:

“I haven’t written that part of the plot yet. How is it that you already know?”

Nakamura Ryota’s face turned deathly pale, unable to say a word.

“When you first called me Lin Zhongqi, I already found it odd. The world only knows me as the Watchman—no one knows that I am Lin Zhongqi. And yet you, a Japanese, the moment we met, you called me that. You said it was a slip of the tongue… but do I look like a fool to you?”

The youth narrowed his eyes, and the sharpness in his gaze made Nakamura’s scalp tingle.

“The more I interact with you, the stranger your attitude becomes. This is our first meeting, yet you act as though you know me well. The way you look at me—it’s not how one looks at a beloved author, but rather as though staring at an ancient relic in a museum.”

As if recalling something amusing, the youth leaned on his elbow, fingers interlaced under his chin, amber eyes glimmering with curiosity:

“I grew more and more suspicious, so I decided to test you on a whim. What I just said about the plot—I haven’t even outlined it yet, it only exists in my mind. And yet, how did you know that the barbarians captured the emperor?”

Nakamura Ryota was speechless.

He stared in near-horror at the smiling youth before him, his mind racing, but he could not come up with any plausible explanation.

Suddenly he remembered a post he had once seen in his previous life on a forum, where a netizen complained—

“I’m really sick of those authors who write transmigration novels. Just so the protagonist can gather underlings and ‘change history,’ they go around lowering the IQs of all the famous figures of that era—turning those brilliant minds, whose intelligence was off the charts, into fools even dumber than the protagonist.

Honestly, these so-called transmigrators were nobodies in the modern era. Some of them didn’t even finish college. Where do they get the confidence to think they can outwit those elite masterminds of the past with their pitiful, half-baked skills? Let’s be real: any emperor, minister, or general who left their name in the annals of history was the cream of the crop of their society. If we translate that into modern terms, they were the equivalent of a president, prime minister, or chairman of the military commission—national or deputy state-level leaders. If you were truly capable of defeating people like that, then why weren’t you already playing the political game in the modern world? Why were you still just a nobody?”

When Nakamura Ryota first saw this post online, he too was indignant and snapped back at the poster: “If you’re so capable, why don’t you try it yourself? If not, then shut up!”

But now, he regretted it so much it felt like even his liver was turning green!

He regretted not taking that post seriously sooner! If he had, he wouldn’t have foolishly thought he could play tricks and get close to Li Jingran!

How could he have forgotten—this man’s debut work had been a detective novel! That meant Li Jingran was already meticulous by nature, skilled at reasoning! In other words, Li Jingran was practically a walking Sherlock Holmes!

If he had remembered that, he wouldn’t have so carelessly exposed himself today, nor experienced firsthand what it meant to be utterly crushed by someone else’s intellect.

“You know,” Le Jing said with a smile, watching the panic on the Japanese youth’s face, “in England, there was once a writer named Arthur Conan Doyle. He wrote a detective novel called The Sign of the Four. In it, the protagonist, Sherlock Holmes, said this line—”

And then, in flawless British English, the boy recited:

‘When you have eliminated the impossibles, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

“In Chinese, that means: once you’ve ruled out all impossibilities, then whatever remains, no matter how unlikely, must be the truth.”

“So can I guess…” Nakamura Ryota’s eyes widened as he watched the boy’s lips move, softly speaking the words that exposed his greatest secret:

“You… are from the future?”

The so-called “bolt from the blue” was nothing compared to this. Nakamura Ryota felt like he’d been struck senseless by thunder.

He stared at the boy’s expression—calm, almost amused—yet it filled him with horror, as though he were staring at a terrifying monster.

“So, can you tell me? Am I right?”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about…” Nakamura Ryota’s weak denial, under the boy’s all-seeing gaze, sounded pale and powerless. He stared blankly at Le Jing’s quiet smile for a long moment, then suddenly dropped his shoulders as though abandoning all resistance.

“You… reasoned correctly.” Covering his face, he said hoarsely, “I really do come from the future.”

Perhaps that was for the best. He told himself—since this man was so intelligent, maybe he could finally give him the answer he had been searching for all along.

“Would you like to hear my story?”

“Of course. I’ve been curious for a long time.”

And so, a weary, wandering soul began to tell Le Jing a very long story.

If you could transmigrate, where would you go?

The tyrannical Qin? The mighty Han? The flourishing Tang? The scholarly Song? The fierce Yuan? The steadfast Ming? The ruling Qing?

Or perhaps… the Republic of China—an era filled with humiliation, every inch of time steeped in blood, every corner of the land soaked in tears?

When Song Zhonghua was in middle school, the part of history he hated most was modern history.

Every time he read about some humiliating treaty signed by so-and-so, he would be so furious he wished he could transmigrate back and beat those people to death.

Every time he read about the countless crimes committed by the Japanese army on Chinese soil, he, like many other hot-blooded youths, would roar that he wanted to kill every last Japanese.

And so, many years later, when Song Zhonghua recalled these blurred memories, he could only laugh bitterly, lamenting how fate toys with people.

By then, he was no longer Song Zhonghua. That vast 9.6 million square kilometers of land had nothing to do with him anymore.

His name was Nakamura Ryota.

A typical Japanese name.

Born into a typical Japanese middle-class family.

His father owned a factory. His mother was a full-time housewife. He had an elder sister and a younger brother. To outsiders, they were the picture of a happy family of five.

If Nakamura Ryota didn’t have memories of his past life, he might indeed have been a happy Japanese youth.

But there is no “if” in this world.

Song Zhonghua lived on in Nakamura Ryota’s heart, haunting him day and night, leaving him restless, tormented, and unable to eat or sleep.

He knew all too clearly what heinous crimes his new homeland would commit against the country of his past life.

Once, he believed all Japanese deserved to die.

Now, he was one of those very Japanese.

In 1931, during the Mukden Incident, he was just 21 years old.

In 1937, during the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, he was only 27.

Sooner or later, he would be conscripted by the military. He would be forced to point a gun at the compatriots of his past life, to commit countless atrocities on the soil of his former motherland.

In his past life, Song Zhonghua had been a naive youth. He thought that if he could transmigrate back in time, he could use his knowledge of the future to change history and achieve greatness.

But now, Nakamura Ryota’s soul was weary. He understood: he was only human, not a god.

As long as ambition existed, as long as Japan pursued its imperial dream, as long as China remained weak, war between the two nations was inevitable. Even if it wasn’t Japan, some other power would have invaded China. Because, as the saying goes—when a country falls behind, it will be beaten.

And so, even if not him, it could be his family, his friends, his classmates, his neighbors—anyone he met on the street—who might become executioners on the battlefield.

Once, Nakamura Ryota considered suicide.

He chose to hang himself.

The moment he kicked away the stool and felt the suffocating agony, he suddenly regretted it. He didn’t want to die—he wanted to live!

When he finally opened his eyes again, out of the long darkness, what he saw was his parents’ faces aged overnight, and the relieved, anxious expressions of his elder sister and younger brother.

…If not for his past life, how happy could he have been?

To him, knowledge of the future was no golden finger—it was a curse.

Death was too painful. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Why should he die?

That near-death moment forced him to reflect on his fifteen years as Nakamura Ryota.

Aimless. Tormented. Self-critical. Self-loathing.

That was his life.

Too scared to die, yet unwilling to live.

It was then that he suddenly thought of Li Jingran.

Nakamura Ryota looked at Le Jing with a complicated expression and began quietly: “In the future, anyone who’s gone through middle school will—”

“Skip that part.” Le Jing interrupted him. “I don’t want to know my future. It’s precisely because the future is unknown that it holds infinite possibilities, that it fills people with hope. Don’t tell me my future—just as you shouldn’t spoil the ending of a book I haven’t finished.”

“Then… may I think of you as someone I can seek advice from? To ask what I should do?”

Nakamura Ryota nodded silently. This was the question that had tormented him for fifteen years.

“You only need to do what you believe is right.” A voice from a century ago answered him firmly:

“If the sky is dark, then survive in the dark. If speaking out is dangerous, then keep silent. If you feel too weak to shine, then curl up in a corner.

But—do not grow so used to the darkness that you start defending it. Do not take pride in your cowardice. Do not mock those who are braver and more passionate than you.

We may be humble as dust, but we must never be twisted like maggots.”