Chapter 324 - Whose Names?

When Qing Chen and Feng Xuan went home, they did not waste time and got started with the tattoos and the clues. Qing Lok had been home since the afternoon and already passed a bunch of paper for Qing Chen to look at.

Feng Xuan was more than surprised that when she got in the door, she found Liu Meilien walking down the stairs.

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed and went in to hug the other girl. "You're here!"

Liu Meilien nodded but there was a look on uncertainty in her eyes as she turned to greet Qing Chen. "Thank you for letting me stay."

"No worries at all," Qing Chen replied to her as if they had known each other forever. "If we devide the estates, this would be Lok's." He smiled. "You might as well get familiar as early as now. Dinner?"

They all followed him to the dining area. Liu Meilien clutched Feng Xuan's arm. "I don't know what I'm doing here. I'm so nervous!"

"Why are you nervous?" Feng Xuan chuckled. "They are nice boys."

"But what about… what about the eldest brother?"

"Oh, Wuming! You're nervous because of him? He's a ray of sunshine! You'll absolutely love him. He acts like he's the youngest of the three of them."

Liu Meilien squeezed Feng Xuan. "I'm really scared."

Feng Xuan heard the horror in her voice she stopped walking and faced her step-sister. "Do you want to go home?"

"I don't think so. I'm just feeling a little jittery I guess. New house and all that."

Feng Xuan sent her a reassuring smile. "You might be scared with the things that you would see around this house. But I assure you, there's no place safer. Okay?"

Liu Meilien forced her lips to spread. At least it was a smile. "Okay. And you're going to be here, right?"

"I'm not going anywhere."

**

It was a short dinner, none of them barely got anything in their stomachs in their excitement to get right back into action.

Qing Lok passed a collated folder to his brother and flipped its pages, pointing on the picture of his tattoo. "Okay, so one of them," he gestured to the team, "suggested that there is another layer in your tattoo. These," he pointed to the frame of the tattoo, "is glass and that the cracks on it, could actually be a map."

Qing Lok turned to a new page, which featured a rough draft of the isolated layer of the cracks. Then he flipped to another page. At the top, it said "trial #1". The next page said "trial #2".

"We're still trying to make up patterns and see if we get a match somewhere," Qing Lok said. "But it could take days. There are endless possibilities. But I'll switch the teams to make sure that we're working around the clock until we find something."

Qing Chen took a closer look at the picture of his tattoo. How come he never saw those cracks before? They were so thin. And who would've thought that…

Then he saw something. "You're right, this is glass."

"What?" Qing Lok said and huddled to his brother.

"I think, this painting is giving you a view of the person from the inside of a house, I guess? This is glass," he pointed to the cracks. "Then… we see the mountains, then the patch of water. Do you see it?"

Qing Lok took the picture. "You're right. But what's the rose doing in the middle?"

"I think the rose is INSIDE the room." Qing Chen pinched the bridge of his nose. "I cannot believe Mother painted something like this. Of all the times she painted with color, she decided to make this one black and red."

Qing Chen turned to the team. "Who figured this was glass?"

A small lady from the corner of the room, raised her hand without looking back, her fingers a blur on top of the keyboard. 

"If you are right," Qing Chen said, "I'd be more than happy to feed your family for life."

"Thank you, sir," said the girl like she was not at all impressed.

Qing Chen turned to Qing Lok with a shocked look on his face.

Qing Lok grimaced. "She could get a little moody. But really smart."

Qing Chen turned to the other pages and found a new page where the "trial #n" stopped. "What's this?"

"Right," Qing Lok said, gesturing to the rose. "Kind of a stretch but rose means Valentines, right? I mean, no better occasion. Our good old friend, Edgar Allan Poe, has a poem titled just that." He flicked to the next paper. "Here's the copy of it."

Qing Chen read the poem. 

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,

Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda, 

Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies

Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.

Search narrowly the lines!- they hold a treasure

Divine- a talisman- an amulet

That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure-

The words- the syllables! Do not forget

The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor

And yet there is in this no Gordian knot

"Search narrowly the lines they hold a treasure," he repeated. "Was she talking about the map or what? El Dorado is also about finding gold—which is treasure and then this poem also beckons you to search for something. Should we establish that she was really trying to make us find something?"

Qing Chen turned to Feng Xuan and it chipped her heart because he looked so helpless. She knew that he wanted to find the answers, but looking at him feeling miserable at what they were about to find, made her doubt if she made the right decision on supporting his decision of finding his mother.

Feng Xuan nodded as an answer to his question. She had the brains but she had no clue on who their Mother was. She didn't know how her mind worked.

Qing Chen turned to Qing Lok again. "Are you sure we're really reading into things in the correct order?"

"If it doesn't make sense then we'll try again. Try and try until we tire ourselves and quit, right?"

Qing Chen ran a hand on his tired face. He smiled at his brother. "At least, we could say that we did everything in the end. Now, tell me more about this poem."

"That's not the only peculiar thing in this poem," Qing Lok said and took a highlighter. "It's actually hides a name. EAP wrote this for a married woman he fancied or something like that. He hid her name here. That's the treasure he's talking about. 

"See this? The first letter in the first sentence is F. Then the second letter on the second sentence is R. If you continue doing this for the rest of the poem, you'll end up with Frances Sargent Osgood."

Qing Chen groaned. "You have got to be fcking kidding me."

Qing Lok looked ashen. "I think Mother is trying to make us find names."

"The question is: whose names?"