FRAGMENT 78
A Frequency Written by Fate
Fragments: An Indispensable Physical Resonance
Time & Location: Summer 2008 · The "Metaphysical Arena," Chegongzhuang, Beijing
Good evening, listeners.
This is Beijing People's Broadcasting Station.
I am Sha Qingqing.
At that moment, language itself became a barrier.
No Chinese phrase, no carefully chosen sentence, could adequately describe what I was hearing.
My body had already become an absorbing stone.
The sound filled my ears.
My brain.
My entire body.
My entire world.
A voice written by fate.
Its arrival sliced through the thick calluses that money, worldly concerns, and accumulated wisdom had layered inside my ears.
The White Crow broke free from its cocoon.
My gift awakened completely.
I dropped to the floor once more.
Within minutes, I isolated the wavelengths I had been searching for.
They matched the samples stored on the USB drives perfectly.
All night long I listened.
Every syllable.
Every rhythm.
Even the evil snoring hidden among the recordings.
Everything was committed to memory.
Then I returned to my computer.
Using Chinese characters and musical notation, I recorded what I had heard.
Copied it onto a USB drive.
Encrypted it.
Sealed it inside an envelope.
Then placed it back into the military canvas bag.
The female official came personally to retrieve it.
I pointed toward the drive.
“Everything is here.”
“He's hiding in an underground warehouse north of the Fifth Ring Road.”
“Respiration rate: sixteen point four breaths per minute.”
“Go get him.”
At seven o'clock the next morning, I turned on the radio.
Locked onto the same frequency.
One hour later, Sha Qingqing's voice returned.
Outside my window, the morning sun spread across the world.
Old Tong called.
He was laughing openly.
“Bai Ying, thanks to you. Thank you. Truly.”
His happiness was completely genuine.
For once, there was not a trace of bureaucratic formality in his voice.
“The marshal's grandson was rescued?”
I asked.
“Yes.”
“The documents are intact.”
“We got every one of those bastards.”
As I arranged stones on a Go life-and-death problem, I responded with the usual twists and turns expected in official conversation.
“This time, you've performed a great service.”
“Otherwise, the state visit could have become a disaster.”
I hung up.
Then switched on the radio again.
A newly purchased Sony 7600GR.
Sensitive.
Reliable.
The world felt strange.
No.
The White Crow felt strange.
In the past, every awakening had arrived with pain.
Blood.
Loss of control.
But Sha Qingqing's voice was like a surgeon's scalpel.
It entered my ears and cut away the pathological noise in a single stroke.
The Sony emitted an almost imperceptible hiss.
A faint vibration that ordinary radios could never detect.
Her voice marched through it with perfect order—
like a military formation approaching from the distance.
She was doing her best to attract listeners with a rich, expressive broadcasting voice.
What I heard was something else.
An indispensable physical resonance.
It resonated with my heartbeat.
It synchronized with my brainwaves.
Like two instruments separated for many years,
finally finding calibration once again.
FRAGMENT 79
Filled with a Desire to Command and Operate at High Frequency
Fragments: An Indescribable Resonance | A Desire to Command and Operate at High Frequency
Time & Location: Spring 2009 · The "Metaphysical Arena," Chegongzhuang, Beijing
I stopped accepting fortune-telling appointments.
There was no longer any need to earn small sums of money by pretending to possess mystical powers.
Anything connected to officialdom was rejected outright.
I preferred solitude.
My wife asked for a divorce.
The separation was peaceful.
I transferred all of my assets within China to her and our daughter.
Property.
Vehicles.
Cash.
Altogether worth more than ten million yuan.
The divorce weighed heavily on me.
I often thought about my former wife's kindness and quiet strength.
Fortunately, my daughter remained close to me.
We stayed in frequent contact.
I refused the commendation certificate and bonus that Old Tong wanted to give me.
In return, he readily agreed to let me use the old office compound free of charge for ten years.
When the signed property-use agreement arrived, I did the math.
The eight old buildings, together with the surrounding grounds, occupied exactly one mu and three fen.
The same size as the ceremonial field once used by emperors at the Temple of Agriculture.
I divided the property into two sections.
The four southern buildings were reserved for Orchid's Go tea house.
The northern buildings became my study and living quarters.
I hired a renovation company and transformed everything into an old-fashioned library compound.
A bamboo fence enclosed the grounds and protected my territory.
Every afternoon at precisely two o'clock, I listened to Sha Qingqing's radio program.
I did not care what she was talking about.
I listened only to her voice.
It felt better than cigarettes.
Better than alcohol.
Better than Coca-Cola.
Even better than Go.
I never imagined meeting her.
And I certainly never realized that the invasion had already begun.
From time to time, Orchid called from Japan.
None of our conversations lasted longer than a minute.
The playful tone that only I could detect was no longer as clear as it once had been.
Yet separated by continents and oceans, we continued playing an invisible game.
She made one move.
I answered with another.
Always on the same board.
Always in the same strange resonance.
“May I speak with Mr. Bai?”
I could hardly believe my ears.
The voice belonged to Sha Qingqing.
“Yes.”
My head began to ring.
Everything before my eyes seemed brighter.
“This is Sha Qingqing from Beijing Radio.”
“Oh. I've heard so much about you.”
I was surprised to hear myself using one of the social clichés I disliked most.
“Minister Tong hopes that I can interview you. When would it be convenient for you?”
“Old Tong is always causing trouble.”
I laughed.
“Whenever it suits your schedule.”
I remembered mentioning Sha Qingqing during a dinner with Old Tong not long before.
The old intelligence officer had probably noticed something.
She arrived a few days later.
A young assistant accompanied her.
The assistant wore thick glasses and appeared suspicious of everyone she saw.
Sha Qingqing stood nearly one meter seventy tall.
Everything about her body language conveyed ease and confidence.
Every joint seemed to click softly as she moved.
Not from wear.
From perfect coordination.
Like a finely tuned engine.
Or perhaps a piano.
“Wow. This place has so much character.”
The confidence in her voice was completely unrestrained.
It unsettled me.
The nearsighted assistant held a laptop against her chest and glanced around the room.
“Mr. Bai, may I take some photographs?”
Her voice sounded like that of an adolescent boy whose voice had just broken.
“Mr. Bai, I've heard you were a top student on the university entrance exam. A journalist. A businessman. Someone who's lived quite an unusual life.”
“Oh, and I heard your father was one of the old revolutionaries.”
“A princeling, then?”
She laughed.
“Just kidding.”
The remark was deliberately designed to signal disdain for power.
I could hear every subtle vibration in Sha Qingqing's voice.
Some of it came from professional training.
Much of it was entirely natural.
A resonance unlike any I had encountered before.
Hidden within it was a desire to command.
A desire to operate at high frequency.
A kind of physical dominance that seemed ready to burst into the open.
I felt uncomfortable.
I wanted to retreat into Orchid's Go room.
But my ears had already betrayed me.
I could not switch off her sampling of my soul the way I could switch off a Sony radio.
FRAGMENT 80
Her Dominant Sound Field
Fragments: Caught Between Two Absolute Frequencies | Shattering Centuries of Silence
Time & Location: Spring 2010 · The "Metaphysical Arena," Chegongzhuang, Beijing | Kansai Ki-in, Osaka
Sha Qingqing employed every interviewing skill she possessed to make me relax, to make me talk.
In truth, the less she spoke, the more I wanted to say.
All she needed was that calm, friendly voice she used on the radio, and I could not help opening my heart.
Yet whenever I was about to fall silent, she somehow became quiet first.
“May I give you a hug?”
Just before leaving, she walked directly toward me.
I could not refuse.
It was only a polite Western-style embrace.
Yet I could clearly hear her breathing deepen through her nose.
Only then did I see it.
That face, which at first glance seemed ordinary, was covered with a softness that appeared only in rare moments of complete surrender.
Rows of murmuring frequencies.
Flakes drifting through sunlight.
As I watched her tall figure disappear into the distance, I seemed to see
Rowan Lee,
Baorigé,
Dawa Yangzong.
One after another, fading into the glow of sunset.
Only Orchid was absent.
I could hear nothing except the faint tremor of a Go stone between her fingers.
Sha Qingqing called me every day.
There were no forbidden subjects.
She spoke to me exactly as one would speak to family.
Holding the receiver, I allowed the warmth of her voice to pour into my nervous system like a liquid that could never be diluted.
Meanwhile, my eyes remained fixed on the star point where Orchid so often placed her stones.
Once, that place had been pure ground.
Sacred ground.
Now it had become territory occupied entirely by Sha Qingqing's sound field.
She appeared unexpectedly again and again.
Sometimes she simply sat beside me without saying a word.
Watching me browse news articles and scientific essays online.
Watching me play Go against myself.
Lighting cigarettes for me.
Handing me cans of Coca-Cola.
She repeatedly invited me to dinner.
Brought me Japanese cigarettes.
American lighters.
German fountain pens.
The sort of imported goods that could only be purchased at Scitech Shopping Center beside the radio station.
Sometimes she joked:
“Could you buy me the diamond ring Elizabeth wore?”
The emotions of a woman in her thirties came rushing forward without disguise.
Without hesitation.
I would reach into a Go bowl, searching for a stone, trying to anchor myself to that eternal frequency of stone and logic.
Yet my body—and that damned White Crow—trembled uncontrollably.
At every breath she took beside me.
At every syllable she spoke from miles away.
I was trapped between two absolute frequencies.
Like a piece of iron being magnetized over and over again.
One day I told her:
“I'm leaving the country for a while.”
Suddenly she wrapped her arms around me.
“I love you. Don't go.”
I froze.
A warm, invasive current flowed through my body.
My hand, numb and disobedient, drifted toward her waist.
Lower.
She cried out.
Loudly.
Loud enough to wake the bones and stones surrounding us.
Startled, I immediately covered her mouth.
“Let me smell you one more time.”
Before leaving, she leaned toward my neck.
The impact was overwhelming.
It crushed decades of discipline.
Even after turning off the radio.
Turning off the phone.
Turning off the computer.
I could still hear her breathing replaying inside my head.
There was nowhere to hide.
No escape from being possessed.
Every moment, her presence exploded against the centuries-old silence surrounding me.
“What are you doing?”
Orchid's voice carried the slightest tremor.
My heart began racing.
“Playing with your Go stones again?”
She laughed softly.
I said nothing.
Not from guilt.
I simply could not find the frequency.
“You should go outside more often.”
“Stop living like a ghost.”
“Hahaha. Bye.”
Click.
She was playing Go.
The sound of a stone touching the board disappeared together with the dial tone.
Then Gao Yong arrived.
His secretary and driver followed behind him.
FRAGMENT 81
Preprogrammed Electronic Pulses
Fragments: The Sound of an Abacus Calculating Potential Threats | Withdrawal Like Coming Off a Drug
Time & Location: Spring 2010 · The "Metaphysical Arena," Chegongzhuang, Beijing | Lake Kapchagay, Almaty Region
I applauded and gave him all the respect his subordinates expected to see.
“Welcome, Vice Minister Gao. Thank you for honoring us with your guidance.”
Earlier, Old Tong had warned me that Gao Yong's political enemies had repeatedly reported him.
His situation was becoming dangerous.
Gao sat across from me.
The synthetic fibers woven into his suit emitted faint static crackles.
His heartbeat remained steady, like a sequence of preprogrammed electronic pulses.
His official authority had thickened into something resembling a sheet of lead.
Behind him, I could hear his secretary's shallow breathing—quick, nervous, afraid.
Throughout the meeting, he never mentioned anything personal.
Instead, he spoke endlessly about a grand project.
Every sentence contained a lie.
At every moment, he used an almost mechanical stability to resist my attempts to scan his soul.
I was beginning to feel sleepy when he casually mentioned a place name:
Almaty.
Deep within his lungs, I heard a tiny whistle.
Relief.
At last.
He took my hand.
His palm was cold.
Slightly damp.
Like a piece of raw meat resting on a butcher's block.
Smiling, he told me that Bai Ying had been born to serve as a piece on the board of national security.
His eyes drifted toward the Go board.
In reality, he understood nothing about Go.
Eventually, the grand narrative came to an end.
He licked his dry lips.
Smacked them twice.
His throat swallowed countless unnecessary words he had chosen not to speak.
After listening for nearly an hour, I realized that all I had really heard was the clicking of an abacus.
Calculating potential threats.
Removing them.
One by one.
On the Go board, I alternated black and white stones.
Together they formed the shape of a “V."
Then I sat there, blowing rings of smoke toward it.
“The licenses, the startup capital, and the management team have all been arranged for you.”
“Stop hesitating.”
His voice rose half a tone.
I deliberately lowered mine.
“Brother, don't get me killed.”
When he left, a trace of something sinister lingered around him.
Even the bamboo grove outside seemed to respond.
The stalks rattled together like the yellow bamboo blades I remembered from thirty years earlier.
He visited several more times.
The final time, he arrived alone.
No secretary.
No driver.
In the end, following his own carefully designed contingency plan, Gao Yong moved me onto the arena he had chosen.
Kazakhstan.
The role he assigned me was neither vulgar nor boring.
I was to lead a Chinese team.
North of Almaty, beside a reservoir known as Lake Kapchagay, we would build a destination modeled after Macau.
Luxury hotels.
Casinos.
The most advanced racing circuit in Central Asia.
The region's largest duty-free shopping center.
A convention and exhibition complex.
And an international airport shaped like an eagle.
More remarkably, I was granted the authority to establish temples and churches representing different religious traditions throughout the integrated resort known as Tengri Dream World.
It was not a great power's Belt and Road Initiative.
It was a small city.
A pluralistic world.
The low-frequency drone of the aircraft engines rubbed against my memories like coarse sandpaper.
Slowly, relentlessly, it wore away the recordings of Sha Qingqing's voice still preserved in my mind.
I tried desperately to remember her pronunciation.
The way a single phrase could make me instantly alert.
But at ten thousand meters above the earth, in that cold and thinning air, the signal vanished completely.
The White Crow slipped once more into its familiar sleep.
A sleep filled with red mist and confusion.
The withdrawal felt physical.
Like the sudden loss of a drug.
It left me with a despair rooted not in emotion but in biology itself.
Shortly before my departure, Old Tong retired ahead of schedule.
He never called me.
Years later, I heard many versions of the story from many different people.
In every version, Gao Yong's name appeared.
But I knew better.
The real answer had vanished the moment Old Tong closed that door.
And everything beyond it fell silent.
