Meridian Verdict

The only sound in the interpretation booth was her own breathing.

Shen Yumian stared at the long table beyond the glass, her lips almost still, her voice steady as it entered the microphone.

Six years of simultaneous interpretation had given her mouth its own rhythm, like a wound-up clock, precise to a terrifying degree.

"...So regarding the third clause, the Chinese side's position is—"

She paused.

On the left side of the long table, Chinese representative Mr. Wang had clearly said, "Three points. We can accept three points."

But in her right ear’s monitor, British representative Mr. Smith nodded and replied in English, "Five points. Acceptable."

Three points. Five points.

A cold sweat crawled up the back of Shen Yumian’s neck. She quickly corrected herself, her voice still steady: "Excuse me, correction—three points. Three points."

Mr. Smith paused, a confused smile on his face. "But you just said five."

She hadn’t. She was certain she hadn’t. Her mouth had its own rhythm, and her mouth did not lie.

Xiao Lin in the adjacent booth knocked on the glass. First he gave a thumbs-up, then, seeing her pale face, changed to a questioning gesture—his channel was fine.

Only hers was cracked.

When her father taught her simultaneous interpretation, she was sixteen. The old man shoved a small dictionary into her hands and said, "An interpreter is a ferryman. Words cross from one tongue to another, so people can cross over." She didn’t understand then, only that the words felt like a prophecy.

The meeting continued. Mr. Wang said, "This is our bottom line." She interpreted: "This is our bottom line."

Mr. Smith’s face darkened. He turned his head to whisper to his assistant, "She said 'threat.'"

Threat. Threat.

She had said bottom line. Clearly, without a single syllable wrong.

Third time. Mr. Wang gave a number: "Twenty million." She interpreted: "Twenty million." The British side wrote it down: twenty-one million.

One million more. Out of nowhere, one million more.

Shen Yumian removed her headset, then put it back on. The channel was fine, the equipment was fine, the battery was full.

The language had cracked down the middle. And she sat right on the crack—half her body had already fallen through.

She took a deep breath, facing the microphone, her voice steady from six years of training: "Please note, this clause—"

The world flickered.

Like an old TV with poor signal, the whole conference room shuddered horizontally for one frame. The fluorescent lights’ hum stretched and distorted into a long, mournful fog horn.

Fog seeped in under the door. White, cold, with a salty, sharp smell.

"Mr. Wang?" Her voice echoed in the empty room. "Mr. Smith?"

No one answered. The long table was still there, but the people were gone. Fourteen chairs, fourteen cups of tea still steaming, the steam from the tea blending with the fog seeping in from under the door.

She instinctively leaned toward a cup of tea. The surface reflected the ceiling, reflected the fog—but not her face.

She stepped back, knocking over a chair. In her headset, amid the fog horn, a low English voice mixed in, like a ship’s announcement: "All aboard."

She looked down and realized her left hand was still pressing the microphone button. Her professional instinct overrode her fear. She finished the half-sentence into the mic—

"—Please note, this clause has two versions."

She hadn’t meant to say that. It was her mouth that said it.

Then she fainted.

It was the salty wind that woke her.

Shen Yumian opened her eyes, first seeing fog. Thick, impenetrable white fog, with the sound of water in it, the sound of oars stirring. She was lying on a stone step, the steps descending into a gray-green pool.

She sat up. The interpretation booth was gone, but her suit remained—dark gray business attire, high heels stuck in the stone crevices, silk stockings torn. She pulled out her phone—no signal. The time in the upper-right corner of the screen was frozen at 00:00, not a second had moved. Midnight. She recalled what her father had said: “Midnight and noon are the axis of the day.” A chill ran down her spine.

"Hello—?" she called out. The fog swallowed her voice, no echo even. She tried walking back the way she came, took a dozen steps, then hit a wall of fog and turned back. The stone steps were still the same.

She rummaged through her handbag: ID, lipstick, wallet—all there. The RMB in her wallet was still there, but there was also a new banknote she had never seen before—dark blue-green, with a QR code printed on it, and four small characters in the corner: “Heaven and Earth Universal.” She held the note, it was so light, like ash left after burning.

A rowing sound came from the fog. A black-prowed boat glided out of the white mist. A man in a straw hat stood at the bow, pole in hand, silently watching her.

The fog on the opposite bank was thinner, and she could faintly make out two silhouettes: one to the east, the outline of a memorial archway with curved eaves; one to the west, the spire of a bell tower, the clock face of a round bell gleaming coldly. A river, two roofs.

A sound of opera drifted over from the river’s center—soft, melodic Kunqu, but the lyrics made her shiver—

"To be, or not to be..."

She took half a step back, her heel hitting something. She looked down—

A small scale.

A brass rod, palm-length, lying on the stone step. The pan was empty, no weights. But the rod was pressed down on one end, lifted high, the pointer pointing to a spot on the rod with no markings.

A blank. No numbers, no marks.

She picked up the scale. Light, lighter than brass. She stuck a strand of hair into the pan—the pointer didn’t budge, stubbornly pointing to that blank space.

"What is this..." she murmured.

The oars came closer. The boat stopped before the steps. The straw-hatted man reached out a hand, palm up.

Shen Yumian didn’t move.

The man didn’t urge her. He looked at her, then at the scale in her hand, and gently shook his head. With a light poke of his pole, he was about to leave.

"Wait!" she called out. "Where is this? How do I get back?"

The man stopped. With stiff, mechanical Chinese—like he was picking each word from a dictionary—he said: "Meridian City. Mist Harbor."

"Meridian City?" She had never heard of such a place. "Which city? Am I... dead?"

The man was silent for a long time, long enough that she thought he wouldn’t answer, then he said, "Ask the scale. Don’t ask me."

The man didn’t answer. The boat slid into the fog.

"Hey—" she took two steps after him, but the steps were slippery, nearly falling into the water. She grabbed the stone railing and suddenly remembered something—she reached into the inner pocket of her suit.

There. The small Chinese-English dictionary was still there.

Her father’s relic. She carried it wherever she went, worn, the pages curled. She clutched it in her hand like a lead weight.

She opened it. On the flyleaf were her father’s words: “An interpreter is a ferryman.” The ink had long bled through.

She flipped through a few pages, her fingers stopping—some English words were heavily underlined with a ballpoint pen: ferry, scale, witness.

Ferry. Scale. Witness.

What was her father thinking when he underlined these words?

ferry—wasn’t that the straw-hatted man just now? scale—this strange scale in her hand. witness—witness of what, where did the witness come from?

Three words, like three nails, nailed her to the fog.

Just as she was about to examine further, a voice suddenly came from deep within the fog—

It was her voice. From the fog, in her own voice, in her own tone, finishing the half-sentence from the meeting room:

"—Please note, this clause has two versions."

Someone had finished her sentence for her in the fog.

Welcome to Meridian Verdict. This is the English edition of my completed 700-chapter novel — fully written, now rolling out one chapter a day. If you enjoy it, a Follow and a rating help more than you know. — vipinwang