Bai Yuan froze in his tracks, while Su Xingtong was momentary stunned, turning his head to look at Bai Yuan with a mix of confusion and disbelief.
Sensing Su Xingtong’s gaze, Bai Yuan immediately dug his heels in. “You’re talking nonsense!”
Mo Junyi remained unmoved. “Are you going in yourself, or should we invite you in?”
In his panic, Bai Yuan spoke without thinking: “If I’m not willing, can you even force me?! Careful, or I’ll go online and expose all of you!”
Mo Junyi had no patience to continue listening. “As you wish.” He raised his hand, signaling the nearby officers to take him inside.
The people in the lobby watched with uncertainty as Bai Yuan was “invited” in. Su Xingtong raised his hand to grip the police jacket on his shoulders, his expression dark and unreadable as he watched Mo Junyi’s retreating back.
His female assistant looked at Mo Junyi in the distance and then at Teacher Su. Finally, she couldn’t help but ask, “Um, Teacher Su… what should we do about that Weibo post?”
Su Xingtong snapped out of his thoughts at her words. Seemingly making a decision, he opened his phone and replied, “We can’t just ignore it.”
The assistant knew they couldn’t ignore it, but the point was how to handle it. However, despite her fretful waiting, Su Xingtong said nothing more, focusing on typing something into his phone.
After standing there for a moment, the assistant seemed to have a sudden realization. she quickly took out her own phone and clicked into Weibo again. Sure enough, before she even opened the trending list, she saw a new post from her “Special Following” on the home page:
Su Xingtong V: Thanks to all the ‘Wutongs’ (fans) for your concern. Our entire crew is currently at the police station undergoing questioning; there has been no forced behavior during this period.
Specific details are still under further investigation. I also ask my fans to trust our country’s People’s Police. Do not follow the crowd or believe malicious rumors.
The attached image was a selfie of himself, still wearing that police jacket.
The assistant’s breath hitched. Looking at the comments, she found they had surpassed 3,000 in an instant. Su Xingtong rarely posted on Weibo, and when he did, it was usually to cooperate with crew promotions. He almost never posted a personal message with such obvious individual emotion.
His fans exploded immediately:
“??? Su-Su posted a selfie? Did the sun rise from the west?”
“Why do I feel like Teacher Su is implying something? Who’s spreading rumors?”
“Check the #1 trending topic. But I feel like Teacher Su’s post is about to reach the top soon.”
“The way Bai Yuan was acting all sarcastic is so disgusting. Is he a ‘500k’ (spy) or something?”
” +1, and his fans are like a cult, actually attacking the police with him. Did they feed their brains to dogs? I’m truly fed up.”
“Wait, is no one seeing the jacket on Teacher Su??? That’s a police uniform, right? My eyes aren’t playing tricks on me, right?”
The comments were all over the place. The young assistant had never seen such a scene and was momentarily dazed. After a long while, she turned and said blankly to Su Xingtong, “Teacher Su… should we let Sister Li know about this?”
Li Li was Su Xingtong’s manager. However, because Su Xingtong was so low-maintenance and didn’t take on commercial advertisements, the manager didn’t spend much time on him.
Hearing the assistant, Su Xingtong remembered this was an issue. But after thinking for a moment, he shook his head. “It’s a small matter; no need to trouble Sister Li. We’ll see how things are tomorrow before telling her.”
This doesn’t look like a small matter, the two assistants thought, trembling. But Su Xingtong was always decisive. They exchanged a glance and ultimately didn’t dare say anything.
The matter fermented rapidly. Anyone with clear eyes knew Su Xingtong was rebuking Bai Yuan. However, Bai Yuan himself was currently undergoing a “joint trial,” and his phone had been taken by the technical department to recover WeChat chat records.
Another group of interrogators failed to get any useful information from the director. They sent him out temporarily and intended to call the next person in.
The leader of this interrogation was Liu Ye, the officer who had questioned Su Xingtong earlier that evening. He had just come out looking frustrated after questioning the stubborn director. Seeing the next person was Su Xingtong, his expression froze—not quite a 180-degree turn, but he certainly became much more friendly instantly.
A colleague coming out with him looked at him with disbelief. “Xiao Ye, are you a fan too?”
Liu Ye turned to him and whispered in an “I’m-disappointed-in-you” tone, “What do you know? This person has a very close relationship with our Chief!”
The colleague looked at Su Xingtong, who was draped in the police jacket, and immediately nodded in realization. “Oh, Team Mo’s brother. Then it’s definitely worth you changing your face.”
Liu Ye, meeting a “straight man” even more obtuse than himself, looked at him speechlessly for a moment.
Su Xingtong gave a few more instructions to his assistants and walked over, still wrapped in the police jacket. “Gentlemen, sorry for the trouble.”
The two officers snapped back to reality. Having just dealt with the director’s arrogance, they assumed everyone in the entertainment industry was like that. They didn’t expect Su Xingtong to be so gentle. After a momentary daze, their tones also softened. “It’s fine; let’s all be understanding. Please follow us in.”
The investigation lasted until the middle of the night. It wasn’t until 3:00 AM that all relevant personnel had been questioned.
A rough outline of the case had formed. The technical department recovered a segment of chat history from Bai Yuan’s WeChat. The content was almost identical to what the suspect had said, but Bai Yuan insisted it wasn’t him who sent the messages.
By comparing the tone and word usage in this chat record with Bai Yuan’s other records, Mo Junyi found that it was indeed different from Bai Yuan’s usual habits.
During the comparison, Bai Yuan’s face turned from red to white to green—it was quite colorful. Earlier, outside the door, he had clearly seen the interaction between Su Xingtong and this officer. These two obviously knew each other, and the officer had even draped his jacket over Su Xingtong’s shoulders. Maybe they had some secret, sordid relationship, just like him and the director.
If that was the case, the officer would surely relay the contents of the chat records to Su Xingtong, and then he would be doomed… Thinking this, Bai Yuan’s expression became increasingly unsightly.
As a criminal investigator, checking a suspect’s chat history was Mo Junyi’s duty. Out of professional ethics, he naturally wouldn’t disclose such things to others. But that didn’t mean he didn’t have his own opinions on the matter.
As an outsider, Mo Junyi had heard some rumors about the “chaos” in the entertainment industry, but it wasn’t until today that he truly saw what that word meant. From Bai Yuan’s deleted and undeleted chat records, it could be seen that he maintained physical relationships with at least three people. The explicit nature of the chats made even someone as stoic as Mo Junyi click his tongue.
“…After looking for so long, do the citizens of our country really not deserve a right to privacy?” Bai Yuan asked with clenched fists.
Mo Junyi looked up and swept a cold glance over him. Liu Minghua, who was flipping through records beside him, sneered, “Oh, so now you know what privacy is?”
This remark was a bit much. Mo Junyi gave Liu Minghua a warning look. She pursed her lips sheepishly, but before she could defend herself, Bai Yuan shouted in humiliation, “What do you mean by that?! Is this the attitude you have as a police officer?!”
As a police officer, Liu Minghua truly shouldn’t have said that. But she really didn’t want to apologize to this arrogant brat. While she was hesitating with an unpleasant expression, Mo Junyi held up the stack of chat records and said, “From the 10th until the day before yesterday, who were you with every night at 11:00 PM?”
Bai Yuan, who had just been acting high and mighty, changed his face instantly. Like he’d seen a ghost, he instinctively said, “How did you kno—No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The speed at which he changed his tune was so fast that Liu Minghua almost laughed. “Little brother, I’ve seen people lie without a script, but I’ve never seen someone slap their own face on the spot like you.”
Bai Yuan was fuming. “Who are you calling ‘little brother’!”
Seeing the two about to argue again, Mo Junyi lost his patience and slammed the materials onto the table. The loud noise startled everyone in the room. Bai Yuan went quiet almost instantly.
Mo Junyi said coldly, “Please answer my questions seriously. If you do not cooperate, you will face the consequences.”
His aura of “commanding without anger” terrified Bai Yuan, who didn’t dare to act out again, answering every question immediately. Liu Minghua snapped back to her senses with lingering fear. Seeing Mo Junyi scare Bai Yuan like that, she thought, this is more like it. For a moment there, the Chief had been unusually gentle in his interrogation style; it was truly bizarre.
The question wasn’t answered until the latter half of the night.
Under Mo Junyi’s interrogation, a trembling Bai Yuan revealed everything he could and couldn’t say. It turned out that during the filming of Day and Night Soul Hunt, he filmed during the day and accompanied a “sugar daddy” at night. This patron was introduced to him by the director. He didn’t know the person’s exact background, only that the patron had a very strange temper and only visited the set at midnight when it was quiet. Furthermore, the patron played quite “wild” and sometimes came with the director. He had fainted from the intensity several times. As for whether the patron had touched his phone while he was unconscious, Bai Yuan didn’t know.
The officers in the room all showed expressions of shock. Liu Minghua couldn’t help but remark, “…You guys really play ‘colorful’ games.”
Mo Junyi was the only one who remained calm. “What is that person’s name?”
Bai Yuan shook his head blankly. “I don’t know… you can go ask the director.”
Based on that one sentence, the director—who was outside breathing a sigh of relief for not being discovered—was called back into the interrogation room. However, facing the police questioning, the director changed his previous cooperative attitude, stubbornly stating he was tired and would only accept interrogation tomorrow.
After an hour of questioning without any results, the team ended up with a suspect snoring on the table. Mo Junyi stood in the interrogation room with an unreadable expression. After a long while, he spoke: “Let’s end it here for today.”
At 3:00 AM, even criminal investigators used to staying up late were exhausted. Liu Minghua yawned as she followed Mo Junyi. “Chief, what kind of grudge do you think that director has against Big Star Su, that he would…”
Before she could finish, Mo Junyi suddenly stopped. Liu Minghua froze, then looked past Mo Junyi’s back. On an empty bench in the lobby, Su Xingtong was dozing off, his head lowered as he hugged the thick police jacket.
The pale yellow light passed through his slightly trembling eyelashes and draped over his thin frame, making him look beautiful yet fragile, with a softness entirely different from his daytime persona.