Selected Movie – Part 2: The Woman Who Returned From the Dead
The funeral hall fell completely silent.
Only moments earlier, everyone had been standing around the coffin, mourning a woman they believed had died in the explosion at sea. Her portrait hung above the flowers. Her family stood dressed in black. Some cried openly, while others remained strangely calm.
Then the masked woman stepped forward.
Slowly, she raised one hand and pulled the black mask away from her face.
Gasps spread across the room.
The grieving father stared at her as if he had forgotten how to breathe. The young man in the black suit froze beside the coffin. Several relatives stepped backward in shock.
The woman in the portrait was standing in front of them—alive.
But her return was not a miracle.
It was a trap.
After surviving the explosion, she had realized something terrifying: whoever wanted her dead had known exactly where she would be. The attack had not been random, and the information could only have come from someone close to the family.
That was why she allowed the world to believe she had died.
If the killer thought the job was finished, they might finally stop hiding.
And they did.
Before coming to the funeral, she and the mysterious boatman had studied the metal tag marked “Yuanxing 17.” At first, it appeared to be nothing more than an old identification plate. But the man reacted differently when she mentioned his father. He demanded to know how she knew the name.
Her answer changed everything.
There were only three short sentences connected to the tag.
Three sentences left behind years ago.
And one of them contained the name of his father.
The boatman had spent most of his life believing his father’s disappearance was an isolated tragedy. Now he was beginning to understand that it might be connected to the same people who had tried to kill the woman at sea.
The funeral was their first chance to find out who.
Standing beside her own coffin, the woman carefully watched every face in the room.
Fear.
Confusion.
Anger.
But one reaction was different.
A middle-aged man near the back door did not look shocked.
He looked terrified.
Their eyes met for less than a second before he quietly turned and walked away.
The boatman noticed him too.
Without saying a word, he followed.
The man hurried through a service corridor behind the funeral hall and entered an underground parking garage. His pace became faster when he realized someone was behind him.
“Stop!”
He ran.
The boatman chased him between the parked cars until the stranger suddenly pulled a metal bar from the trunk of a vehicle and swung it toward his head.
The boatman barely avoided the first strike.
The second hit his shoulder.
They crashed into the side of a car before the boatman managed to knock the weapon away and force the stranger to the ground.
“Who ordered the explosion?”
The man said nothing.
“Who killed my father?”
For the first time, his expression changed.
That reaction was enough.
“You knew him.”
The stranger began laughing nervously.
“You still don’t understand, do you?”
He looked directly at the boatman.
“Your father wasn’t killed because he discovered the secret.”
He paused.
“He was killed because he helped create it.”
Before the boatman could demand an explanation, the lights in the parking garage suddenly went out.
A gunshot echoed through the darkness.
When the emergency lights flickered back on, the stranger was lying motionless on the ground.
The shooter was gone.
Back inside the funeral hall, the woman had problems of her own.
Her father immediately ordered the doors closed. Nobody was allowed to leave.
He wanted to know why his daughter had hidden the truth from him.
She looked at him carefully.
“Because I didn’t know who I could trust.”
The words hurt him more than the news of her survival seemed to comfort him.
Then the young man in the black suit stepped forward.
“You think someone in this family tried to kill you?”
She did not answer.
Instead, she walked toward the coffin.
“There is something else.”
Everyone watched as she removed a small device hidden beneath the lining.
A recorder.
She had secretly placed it there before the funeral began.
“If people believe you’re dead,” she explained, “they say things they would never say in front of you.”
She pressed play.
At first, there was only background noise.
Footsteps.
Quiet conversations.
Then a voice could be heard clearly.
“The sea didn’t finish her.”
Another voice replied:
“It doesn’t matter. If she comes back, we use the second plan.”
The room erupted.
Everyone started looking at one another.
But the woman raised her hand.
“There is more.”
The recording continued.
“The old man still doesn’t know what happened seventeen years ago.”
The boatman had just returned to the funeral hall when he heard those words.
He stopped immediately.
Seventeen years.
The same number engraved on the metal tag.
Yuanxing 17.
His eyes moved toward the woman’s father.
The older man’s face had suddenly turned pale.
The woman noticed.
“Dad?”
No answer.
“Tell me what Yuanxing 17 means.”
The older man slowly sat down.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he finally whispered:
“It was a ship.”
The boatman stepped closer.
“My father’s ship?”
The older man looked at him.
“No.”
His voice trembled.
“It belonged to me.”
Another silence filled the room.
Seventeen years earlier, Yuanxing 17 had been used for a secret operation far from the coast. Official records claimed the vessel sank during a storm.
But there had been no storm.
The ship had been deliberately destroyed.
People aboard it had discovered evidence connecting several powerful families to an illegal operation worth millions. The boatman’s father had tried to expose them.
And the woman’s father had been there that night.
“You let my father die?” the boatman asked.
The older man shook his head.
“I tried to save him.”
“Then where is he?”
The father looked toward the closed coffin.
“He never died.”
The boatman stared at him.
The woman stepped closer.
“What are you saying?”
Before he could answer, every phone in the funeral hall suddenly rang at the same time.
Dozens of identical notifications appeared.
A video.
The woman opened it.
The footage showed a dark room.
A man was sitting in a chair, his face hidden in shadow.
Then he slowly lifted his head.
The boatman’s expression collapsed.
Even after all these years, he recognized him instantly.
His father.
Alive.
The man looked directly into the camera and spoke only one sentence:
“If you’re watching this, they finally found Yuanxing 17.”
The screen went black.
Seconds later, another message appeared.
COME ALONE — MIDNIGHT — PIER 17.
The woman looked at the boatman.
He was already walking toward the door.
She grabbed his arm.
“This is a trap.”
He looked back at her.
“I know.”
“Then why are you going?”
His eyes hardened.
“Because for seventeen years, I thought my father was dead.”
He pulled his arm free.
“Tonight, I’m finding out why he wanted the world to believe it.”
Outside, far beyond the funeral hall, a black car started its engine.
Inside sat the same person who had ordered the explosion at sea.
And on the passenger seat was another photograph.
Not of the boatman.
Not of his father.
But of the woman.
Across the photograph, only four words had been written:
SHE MUST NOT REMEMBER.
To be continued…
