Wang Yang washed his teapot, which he hadn't used in a long time, and then boiled a pot of water, signaling me to sit down.
I sat on the chair and glanced around, "Have you been living here all along?"
He nodded.
"And you've been investigating Sister Ying all this time?"
He nodded again.
With my arms crossed and one leg crossed over the other, I said, "Tell me, why have you been investigating Sister Ying? What exactly do you do? And what's with the tattoo on your shoulder?"
I blurted out all my doubts. After I finished, Wang Yang looked at me, "Are you really ready?"
I said impatiently, "Can you be a man? Stop with the nonsense."
He gave a wry smile, "Alright... let me think about how to explain this..."
After a moment of thought, he lit a Hongta Mountain cigarette, took a slow drag, and began to recount his origins.
Wang Yang was from the border coast, growing up by the sea. His family had been in the dock transportation business for generations.
By all accounts, his family was quite well-off locally. His father was a ship captain, owning over a dozen cargo ships.
In his childhood, Wang Yang had intended to follow in his father's footsteps and continue the maritime transport business in his hometown.
However, when he was ten years old, his family experienced a sudden change...
Here, he looked up at me and said, "My family has always had a rule: every descendant, by the age of three, must be tattooed with a mark..."
He took off his shirt, revealing his muscular physique, "This tattoo on my shoulder was personally etched onto me by my father when I was three."
"Why?" I asked.
Wang Yang replied, "I don't know. But my dad has it, and my grandfather has it too..."
"When I was little, I asked my dad why we had to do this. My dad told me it was so that someone could find us. I asked who, and my dad said he didn't know."
Hearing this, I frowned slightly, recalling the tattoos on the two men who carried the Zisha teapots when Sister Ying left.
"My dad said it was a rule passed down through generations. If that person ever found our Wang family, we would have to do whatever they asked, no matter what!"
Wang Yang's tone was very serious, not joking at all.
"Has that person found your family yet?" I asked.
Wang Yang nodded, "When I was ten, that person came to my home. After that, my dad and my grandfather left with her, and there was no trace of them..."
"The person you're talking about, wasn't it Sister Ying?" I asked tentatively.
"That's right, it was her!" Although Wang Yang's expression was blank, his eyes held a certain depth.
"She wasn't called An Ying back then," Wang Yang added.
"Then what was her name?" I asked.
"Her name doesn't matter..." Wang Yang sneered, "A name is nothing to her. As long as she wishes, she can be called any name."
I pondered, "If what you're saying is true, and Sister Ying went to your house when you were only ten... wouldn't she be over forty now?"
Wang Yang's gaze became complicated, "I'm not sure... There are some things I can't explain."
He took out a stack of photos from a cardboard box and handed them to me.
I took them and looked through them one by one. Based on the backgrounds and people in the photos, I could see a wide span of time.
Some photos were likely from the Republican era, while others were taken in recent years.
Yet, every photo had one thing in common: Sister Ying was in all of them.
The photos were mostly group shots, some with two or three people, others with dozens.
Sister Ying's appearance in all the photos was the same.
It was as if time had frozen on her face.
I couldn't help but swallow, feeling incredibly shocked.
If these photos were real, then Sister Ying would be at least eighty or ninety years old now.
But did she look like an eighty or ninety-year-old?
Clearly not!
My mind was in a haze. I put down the photos and looked at Wang Yang, hoping for an explanation.
"I spent seven or eight years collecting these photos through various channels," Wang Yang said. "I've been looking for her all these years."
"Why are you looking for her?"
"I want to find out what she had my father and grandfather do back then! Are they alive or dead now!" Wang Yang gritted his teeth.
"Are you sure these photos are real?" I asked.
Wang Yang exhaled a puff of smoke, "I know what you're thinking, but I can definitively tell you that all these photos are real. Not only photos, but also paintings..."
"Paintings?" I was somewhat confused.
Wang Yang rummaged through a cardboard box nearby and pulled out a painting, handing it to me. Without even unfolding it, the texture suggested it was a genuine artifact from the Qing Dynasty.
I unrolled the scroll. It was a portrait of a woman. The woman in the painting had a captivating demeanor, wearing a large headpiece and a blue silk robe, clearly dressed as a Qing Dynasty noblewoman.
These were not the most significant details. The main point was that the woman in the portrait bore a striking resemblance to Sister Ying, seven or eight tenths similar!
"The person in this painting..."
Before I could finish, Wang Yang said, "It should be her too."
"Impossible!" I exclaimed, finding it hard to believe. "If what you're saying is true, then Sister Ying must be over a hundred years old!"
I found it all too unreal. Sister Ying looked at most five or six years older than me, and she certainly didn't look like she was over a hundred.
Besides, who in the world could live that long?
Was this some kind of joke?
The problem was, this joke wasn't funny at all!
"I know you don't believe me, but I want to say that the facts are indeed as I've described. For so many years, I've been investigating her... At first, I didn't dare to believe it myself. I thought she was a descendant of the person in the painting, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find any living person related to her. It can be said that everyone who knew her is now dead."
Wang Yang glanced at me and continued, "Not only that, but she seems to be looking for something..."
"Looking for what?" I asked.
Wang Yang shook his head, "I'm not sure, I just have this feeling... And it's highly possible she suffers from amnesia."
"Amnesia?" My brows furrowed.
"Exactly. By all rights, she would have some recollection of me from when I was little, but she doesn't. To confirm this, I even anonymously sent her photos of my father and grandfather, but she never replied."
"Later, one time, I went to find her directly, holding the photos openly, wanting to ask for clarification..."
At this point, Wang Yang paused, pursing his lips, "From her eyes and expression, it was clear that she was completely unfamiliar with my father and grandfather. It was then that I suspected she might have amnesia."