Yesterday, I saw Lin Jiu in a dream.
To any normal person, an answer like that sounded like flat refusal to cooperate, like stonewalling to the bitter end.
Uncooperative suspects came in roughly two types: the muddleheaded sort who clammed up and knew nothing about anything, and the type like Fang Tian — full of wild nonsense without a single true word. Here the Qingkong police would like to remind you that either approach carries a very high chance of earning you a heavier sentence.
In the monitoring room, some officers frowned, others clenched their fists. Fang Tian's flippant answer had stirred their anger.
But the cold-faced policewoman across from him was unmoved. She went on, "What kind of dream? Tell me in more detail."
"A nightmare. I dreamed I was chased into a ventilation pipe by a female ghost, but my escape failed and she caught me in the end."
"And then?"
"And then you all woke me up."
Feng Xi fell into thought. At first hearing, Fang Tian's answer sounded like an excuse pulled off the top of his head, yet behind this bizarre story there were threads to follow.
Even a deliberate lie will, in unguarded moments, reveal the thoughts buried deepest in a suspect's mind.
To put it in more academic terms, this was criminal psychology.
She wrote the three key pieces of information — "ventilation pipe" and "female ghost" — in her notebook.
Lin Jiu had been killed, and her body was very likely hidden in some ventilation pipe somewhere: that was what Feng Xi read out of those two keywords.
She steadied herself and asked again, "Yesterday afternoon, you posted a thread on the Qingkong student forum titled 'Former High-Rank Ladder Player Here, Mysterious Link Please Come Quick.' In it, you mentioned your gaming skills are quite good, and you also mentioned that you're a CS:GO player. We found that game on your laptop."
"It's passable."
Fang Tian didn't understand why Officer Feng would suddenly ask this. He'd only downloaded the game on the side yesterday and hadn't had a chance to play it.
"Which means it's also possible that, out of vanity, you bought yourself a game skin worth 13,421 yuan."
"Wait, wait. You're saying I spent over ten thousand on what?"
Fang Tian was dumbstruck. That Lin Jiu had found him through a mysterious link was already beyond belief — and now the matter could surpass his expectations all over again, veering off in some unforeseeable direction.
"At 1:27 this morning, Lin Jiu's account made a payment of 13,421 yuan on your computer, buying you a CS:GO skin called 'Dragon Lore.'"
Feng Xi pushed a printed account record in front of Fang Tian. It laid out the detailed transaction record, the IP address, even screenshots of the skins in his inventory. Her gaze was sharp, as if to see straight through him. "The paying account is Lin Jiu's; the game account is yours. Since you say you don't know Lin Jiu's account, kindly explain why a person who vanished three years ago would buy you a virtual item worth over ten thousand yuan."
She wanted Fang Tian to give her an explanation that could hold together.
"......I don't know."
"You don't know?"
Feng Xi was sorely disappointed by the answer. Even if Fang Tian gave more unbelievable replies, she could find a way to dig out the information behind them. "Then back to where we started — this is the first time you've dreamed of Lin Jiu?"
"Right."
"Why today, of all days? What did you do beforehand?"
"This......" Fang Tian started to speak, then stopped. After much thought, he decided to tell it straight. "This has to start with a mysterious link."
He told it in great detail — from registering seven alts in a row to post, to later saving the "mysterious link" some warmhearted netizen had sent him, he laid it all out.
"Lin Jiu came from the game in the link, through a ventilation pipe, to Qingkong University, and then she used your computer to spend over ten thousand yuan...... this is your defense?"
Feng Xi jotted down many more keywords in her notebook.
The story Fang Tian told was a fairy tale, yet many of the details lined up — the seven threads posted on the student forum that afternoon, the vent panel that came loose in the dead of night. When a string of coincidences was threaded together like this, "pure coincidence" no longer covered it.
"I know it sounds unbelievable, but everything I just said is true."
In truth Fang Tian had no idea how to make this cold-faced policewoman believe him.
"I only believe evidence."
Feng Xi said flatly.
"But in a special situation like this, where's the evidence supposed to come from? Am I supposed to bring Lin Jiu here to meet you?"
"Not to meet us. To meet you."
"Huh?"
Fang Tian was stunned.
For a moment he couldn't tell whether Feng Xi was being sarcastic or speaking her genuine mind.
Stunned alongside him were the young officers in the monitoring room. To them, Fang Tian's story had no leg to stand on — a mysterious link, a female ghost in a ventilation pipe, was he writing a ghost story here?
Yet just as they assumed Feng Xi would end the interrogation on the available evidence, she'd come out with this baffling line.
"Since you're so sure Lin Jiu came to Qingkong, go find her."
Fang Tian held Feng Xi's gaze. He kept feeling there was a different sort of light flickering in her eyes, and he caught her small movement —— the nail of her right index finger had dug into the flesh on the back of her left hand, as if she were straining to hold back some emotion about to spill over. "The case is three years old, but as long as the body can be found, current technology can run tests and comparisons. Whether or not it was you, the truth will out in time."
Fang Tian had assumed he'd be treated as a lunatic, but Feng Xi's reaction was far stranger than he'd imagined.
"I can buy you three days."
It wasn't until Feng Xi named the exact figure that Fang Tian finally believed she wasn't being sarcastic or running some entrapment — she truly believed the story he'd just told.
***
The monitoring-room screen was cut off, not long after Feng Xi made that strange proposal.
As one, everyone looked toward the middle-aged officer seated dead center, who was at that moment stirring the coffee in his cup with a spoon, lost in thought.
"Captain, is Feng Xi maybe just overworked lately?"
"Or let me go in instead. That kid's mouth runs nothing but nonsense — not a word of it can be trusted."
The young officers were righteously indignant. The case involved a high-school girl, after all; the one thing they could do now was bring the perpetrator to justice.
"Settle down, all of you."
The captain finally spoke. "I've already discussed it with Feng Xi. This case is being handed over to the Fourth Division."
At the words "Fourth Division," the young officers' faces changed. As one they cut off their indignant protests and said no more.