The second plot develops out of a coincidence, namely that the man named Albert, chosen by Yu Tsun as his victim-message, is a Sinologist who has solved the metaphysical mystery of the novel-labyrinth left by Yu Tsun's illustrious ancestor, Ts'ui Pen. The second plot is also a detective plot, though of a literary-critical nature, whose solution is also based on the decoding of a message. This message is Ts'ui Pen's will (just as the newspaper article on Albert's murder is in some sense Yu Tsun's will), which is decoded on the basis of the key word time, which Ts'ui Pen eliminated from his novel (just as the key word Albert was "eliminated" by proxy to insure the success of Yu Tsun's plan). The unique novel left by Ts'ui Pen, considered by posterity to be "a shapeless mass of contradictory drafts" and decoded by the ingenious Albert, is...