Chapter 45

Chapter 45: The Lone White Bird

“Help me look too,” Feng Ling said, bright-eyed. “The Maze clue is a riddle. The first line is: ‘A top-hatted frog charges into the clouds.’ The second line is: ‘Drooling, it kisses the lone white bird.’ We’ve already found the top-hatted frog. Now we need the lone white bird.”

“Huh?” Zhou Zhou stared at her like she’d started speaking another language.

He craned his neck and looked around the cabin. There wasn’t a bird anywhere.

And it wasn’t just any bird. A lone white bird. That had to be a metaphor. No way it meant an actual bird you’d find in nature.

There were pedal boats shaped like big white geese on the lake. Not just geese, either—there were little yellow ducks, too. But come on. That was nowhere close. How was a frog supposed to be “drooling” and “kissing” any of that?

Zhou Zhou didn’t buy it, but he still pointed anyway. “Hey. Could it be that boat?”

Feng Ling glanced over and turned to Huang Fu Miao Miao. “Look—does that one seem like a white bird to you?”

Huang Fu Miao Miao hesitated, eyes flicking between the lake and Feng Ling. “…It does, kind of. But… something feels off.”

Feng Ling rested her chin in her hand and thought. “Yeah. It’s close, but not quite.”

“And the riddle says a lone white bird,” Huang Fu Miao Miao added carefully. “That boat… it’s not alone, is it? There’s more than one on the lake. What even counts as ‘lone’?”

“Lone might not mean a single boat by itself,” Zhou Zhou said. “It could mean there’s only one boat like that.”

“That makes sense,” Feng Ling said, nodding once.

Three ordinary people together could still outdo a Zhuge Liang.

“When we get down, we’ll ask around. If the whole park only has one white boat like that, we’ve got the right clue.”

Everything had been going smoothly so far. Feng Ling could practically taste victory.

Sixty-six percent, she told herself. Keep pushing.

The cabin rose to the Ferris wheel’s peak.

Zhou Zhou leaned toward the window, taking in the view, but he didn’t spot anything else that looked remotely like a “white bird.” What he did see, unexpectedly, was the Inspection Bureau building.

“From here you can see the Inspection Bureau… and damn, you can even see Qing Jiang No. 1 Bridge.” He pulled out his phone and snapped a few shots. “This angle’s insane.”

Feng Ling looked where he was pointing.

Qing Jiang City had bridges everywhere for traffic flow. No. 1 Bridge was an old one—so old it felt like a relic whenever she passed it by car.

Up here, though, it didn’t look worn at all. From above, it was clean and striking, the structure flaring out like wings—like a snow-white bird spreading itself over the river.

Wait.

A white bird?

Feng Ling’s heartbeat stumbled. She leaned closer to the glass and stared, forcing herself to focus.

But as the Ferris wheel began to descend, the bridge shifted in perspective. The bird shape blurred. The “wings” turned back into steel and cables.

Was it just her imagination?

If she wanted to be sure, she’d need another ride.

The cabin continued its slow descent. The wide view narrowed. Nearby buildings and trees crowded in like giants, blocking the far-off skyline.

As soon as they stepped out, Feng Ling headed for the lakeside.

It had looked close from the Ferris wheel. Walking there proved it wasn’t. The paths twisted and doubled back, and the longer they went, the more irritation crawled under Feng Ling’s skin.

They passed a candy house. Warm sweetness spilled from the doorway—sugar and syrup and something buttery. The restless edge in Feng Ling’s chest eased, just a little.

She stopped immediately, on guard.

“Why’d you stop?” Zhou Zhou asked from behind.

Feng Ling drew in one more breath of the scent and turned to Huang Fu Miao Miao. “The perfume. Now.”

Huang Fu Miao Miao hurriedly shrugged off her little backpack and yanked the zipper down. Inside were five or six bottles—floral, woody, tea, milky, all kinds.

Feng Ling grabbed one at random and sprayed herself and Huang Fu Miao Miao.

Zhou Zhou, walking right behind them, recoiled like he’d been slapped. He clamped a hand over his nose, face twisting.

“Are you two serious? We’re handling business, and you’re spraying perfume?”

Feng Ling didn’t answer. She just kept walking.

At the lakeshore stood a small booth where you rented boats. A park staff member was out on the wooden dock, hooking a returning pedal boat with an iron pole.

Along the shore, more than a dozen empty boats sat neatly lined up.

Feng Ling took one look and her expression hardened. There were four goose-shaped pedal boats right there, and that was before counting the ones still floating out on the water.

“No,” she said flatly. “This isn’t the lone white bird.”

She turned on her heel and marched back toward the Ferris wheel.

The others exchanged looks and followed, confused but not daring to question her.

The frog cabin had already rotated upward. One full cycle took fifteen minutes.

Feng Ling forced herself to wait, jaw set, eyes tracking the slow movement.

Huang Fu Miao Miao hovered nearby, tense, perfume bottle in hand like it was a weapon she didn’t know how to use. She kept glancing at Feng Ling, torn between spraying and not spraying.

Even Zhou Zhou’s patience wore thin. He stared up at the wheel and muttered, “Fuck. Can’t you go any faster? This thing turns like a turtle dragging a millstone.”

Huang Fu Miao Miao thought for a second, then quietly spritzed him twice.

“What the hell—!” Zhou Zhou jumped sideways, hair practically standing up. “Why would you do that? Don’t spray me with that stuff! That’s girly as hell!”

Feng Ling didn’t even look at him. Her gaze stayed locked on the cabin. “It’s coming down. Move. We’re getting on.”

They climbed into the frog-painted cabin again.

This time, Feng Ling kept her eyes fixed on the direction of Qing Jiang No. 1 Bridge, like she was afraid it would vanish if she blinked.

“I thought the bridge looked like a white bird,” she said. “You two look too.”

Zhou Zhou rubbed at the spot on his clothes where the perfume had hit, still grimacing. “The bridge has those triangular cable frames, one on each side. Yeah, it does kind of look like wings. But there are a bunch of Qing Jiang bridges with similar shapes. How do you know which one you mean?”

Feng Ling studied the riverline. In reality, the bridges were spaced far apart. But from the Ferris wheel’s position, they compressed into a tight cluster.

Only Qing Jiang No. 1 Bridge, the one directly facing the frog cabin, stood isolated—separate from the rest. Alone.

That fit the metaphor too well to ignore.

“I’m pretty sure,” Feng Ling said quietly. “The lone white bird is Qing Jiang No. 1 Bridge.”

Then she frowned. One piece still didn’t click.

“But what does ‘drooling and kissing’ mean?”

The frog was in the sky. The bird was on the river. They didn’t even touch. How were they supposed to “kiss”?

“We go to Qing Jiang No. 1 Bridge,” Feng Ling decided. “We look for the rest.”

“You’re sure?” Zhou Zhou’s brows drew together. “The bridge is jammed right now. Cars, people, everything. An aberrant could spot you.”

An aberrant might not bother with an amusement park. But Qing Jiang No. 1 Bridge was a commuting artery—people crossed it every day. Any one of them could be aberrant.

“I’ll be in the car,” Feng Ling said, unconcerned. “They might not even see me. And we have Little Skeleton. If there’s an aberrant around, she’ll notice first.”

She looked at Huang Fu Miao Miao.

Huang Fu Miao Miao nodded hard, like she was swearing an oath. “Yes!”

Zhou Zhou clicked his tongue. “Fine. Let’s go. I warned you, though.”

By the time they stepped off the Ferris wheel again, it was already 7 p.m.

The sun tilted west, and the afterglow hung over the city like a sheet of vivid pink.