“Fuck you, you bitch…”
Mei Jianyuan flew into a rage, cursing loudly as he tried to lunge forward, but he was handcuffed to the chair and couldn’t move, which only made him angrier. A nearby detective quickly pinned him back down. He struggled like a cornered beast but couldn’t budge an inch, so he slammed his fists against the table in fury.
Bang, bang, bang—the loud thuds made Lu Wanwan wince in sympathy. What a sick pervert.
“Enough!” Gu Xing’s shout, deep and resonant, echoed through the small interrogation room and cut off Mei Jianyuan’s tantrum.
Lu Wanwan was sitting to Gu Xing’s right, so close that his shout made her ears ring. She raised a hand to rub her left ear, marveling at how powerful Officer Gu’s lungs were.
The room fell completely silent. Gu Xing said coldly, “Mei Jianyuan, I’ll say it one more time. You only have ten minutes.”
Mei Jianyuan’s eyes were wide with fury. A few seconds later, he suddenly spread his hands and leaned back against the chair. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”
???
What kind of move was this?
“Giving up because you know you can’t win against me?”
“You…” Mei Jianyuan glared furiously. “You bitch. If the police hadn’t been onto me, you think you’d still be alive? You’d already be dead by my knife, and I’d have cut out your tongue and thrown it into a cesspit to rot.”
Mei Jianyuan still refused to believe that Lu Wanwan had discovered him. At least before Heshantown, he had followed her for two weeks, and the bitch hadn’t seemed to notice a thing. The only explanation was that the police had already been watching him, which was the only reason this bitch Lu Wanwan had escaped.
Lu Wanwan ground her teeth. “So that’s how you treated those women?”
“They all deserved to die.” Mei Jianyuan suddenly raised his voice, his face twisted with malice. “Including you, you fucking bitch. All you do is belittle men and betray men. You’ll die a horrible death. The things you say should get you drowned in a pig cage. Even though I couldn’t kill you, no man will ever marry you, and then you’ll see how pathetic you really are.”
???
Psycho!
Lu Wanwan opened her mouth to say, “You’re the one about to die, so you’re the pathetic one!” But Gu Xing spoke before she could. “So, you killed Hua Juanli because you thought she betrayed her marriage?”
“Who’s Hua Juanli?” Mei Jianyuan frowned.
“The woman you killed on January fifth and dumped in the pond by Highway 779.”
“Oh, her!” Mei Jianyuan sneered dismissively. Then, quickly catching himself, he smiled. “Officer, you’re trying to trap me into confessing!”
Damn! The sick pervert had seen through Officer Gu’s tactic. He was sharp, Lu Wanwan thought, breaking out in a cold sweat for Gu Xing.
But Gu Xing remained composed. “Mei Jianyuan, are you afraid to admit it? Didn’t you think you were carrying out justice by killing those women? Didn’t you ask me to bring Lu Wanwan here so you could put her on trial face to face? What’s the matter? Now you realize you were wrong? What you did was nothing short of heinous. You’re a complete and utter monster.”
“Shut up!” Mei Jianyuan roared. “What do you know? Hua Juanli was a despicable woman. Once she made it big, she kicked out the husband who had built the business with her from scratch. Don’t women like that deserve to die?”
Gu Xing didn’t pass judgment but asked, “According to our investigation, you didn’t know Hua Juanli. How did you learn about her situation?”
“I overheard her husband and mother-in-law talking when they were riding in my taxi.”
“Based on just one side of the story?”
“Of course it wasn’t just one side,” Mei Jianyuan retorted harshly. “I saw it with my own eyes. I followed Hua Juanli for over a week. She lived in a villa herself, but made her husband and mother-in-law rent a place, and wouldn’t even let them see their child. Tell me, isn’t she a vicious woman? Doesn’t she deserve to die?”
Gu Xing still didn’t answer, continuing to ask, “Then how did you kill her?”
“That night, she was walking her dog by the park. When no one was around, I knocked her out with a baseball bat and took her away, then killed her.”
“And what about Lü Yaoxin? Why did you kill her?”
Seeing Mei Jianyuan’s blank expression, Gu Xing added, “That’s March 1st of this year. You killed her and dumped her in a septic tank in Fengyao District.”
“That woman deserved it even more. Didn’t you see the news? Her boyfriend was denouncing her online every day. He went on a blind date with that bitch, they dated for about ten days, he spent over a hundred thousand on her, and then she dumped him and ran off with someone else. Women like that who cheat people out of money and feelings should all be killed.”
“How did you find out Lü Yaoxin’s address?”
“It was online! People had doxxed her.”
“Then how did you kill her?”
“This one was the luckiest. I only followed her for two days before I caught an opportunity. I can only say this woman was so evil that even heaven was helping me deal with her. That day, I don’t know where she was going, but she must have been taking a shortcut through the abandoned old No. 3 Middle School. I followed behind, knocked her out, took her away, and killed her. Because this woman was so despicable, I threw her into the septic tank.”
What kind of bullshit reasoning was this? Lu Wanwan was so angry her head throbbed. She wanted to say that a sick pervert had no right to decide whether others lived or died, but Gu Xing was in the middle of interrogating him, and she couldn’t interrupt. She clenched her fists tightly, barely suppressing the urge to curse him out.
Later, under Gu Xing’s questioning, the sick pervert confessed to all his crimes truthfully. Throughout his confession, he showed not a trace of guilt—instead, he was extremely smug. In particular, a girl named Fan Yuzhu’s body had never been found to this day, because the sick pervert had thrown her into the surging Yangtze River. He even took the opportunity to mock the police, calling them all useless for taking two years to find him.
Lu Wanwan understood now—this man was simply insane, a madman with a completely twisted worldview.
With his confession, the serial murder case that had hung over Jiangcheng for two years and brought countless nightmares to the city’s women was finally completely solved. But even so, everyone’s hearts were still unbearably heavy. The nine women who had died could no longer breathe fresh air, could no longer eat and chat with their families. Their families lived each day carrying the pain of losing their loved ones, forever remembering them—and all of this had been caused by the sick pervert standing before them.
After a long silence, Lu Wanwan asked a question she was deeply curious about. “But how did you find out my address? I remember I never exposed any of my personal information online.”
“That’s because you’re stupid!” Mei Jianyuan said with a face full of mockery. “All I had to do was send you a private message saying I wanted to die, and you sent me messages to comfort me. In the end, I pretended you had talked me out of it and said I wanted a signed autograph from you. You mailed it to me, and by tracing the post office where the package was sent, I pinpointed your location. I can only say you were doomed—within less than a week, I found you in that area.”
So that was the answer. Lu Wanwan gasped sharply. This sick freak had truly been scheming with every possible means at his disposal.
Seeing Lu Wanwan stunned, the sick freak burst into laughter, then said in a sinister tone, “What a pity! If the police hadn’t suspected me, you would already be dead. What a shame—if only you’d made it past that day, you’d have been done for.”
“Pity?” Lu Wanwan gave a heavy snort. “What’s a pity is that a sick freak like you can’t be sentenced to death right now, and you get to live a few more days, wasting a few days of prison food. But it won’t be long—cases like yours are decided quickly. Soon you’ll be down there kowtowing and apologizing to those nine innocent girls.”
“Pah! They’re not worthy of that! Back then—”
Mei Jianyuan was about to continue, but Gu Xing cut him off. “Mei Jianyuan, the reason Hua Juanli was able to make her husband leave with nothing is because her husband was a freeloader who also cheated and committed rape, caught a disease, and came back for Hua Juanli to pay for his treatment. Do you think Hua Juanli had no reason to divorce him?”
Without waiting for Mei Jianyuan to answer, Gu Xing continued, “As for Lü Yaoxin, she’s even less at fault. She never agreed to Fang Jun’s pursuit from start to finish. It was Lü Yaoxin’s parents who took the bride price from Fang Jun’s family on their own. From beginning to end, the fault lay with Fang Jun and Lü Yaoxin’s parents.”
“They deserved to die too,” Mei Jianyuan said viciously. “When a man makes a mistake, he can just correct it. Hua Juanli was too vicious—she made her man leave with nothing. She deserved to die. Lü Yaoxin is the same. Since her parents took the money, she should have married him. Women in ancient times were supposed to observe the Three Obediences and Four Virtues. It’s because there are too many vile women like Lu Wanwan nowadays that they’ve corrupted all those other women. All these restless, vile women should be killed.”
“You’re the scum who should die!” Lu Wanwan was furious, wishing she could subject him to all the Ten Great Tortures of the Qing Dynasty.
Gu Xing said, “Mei Jianyuan, we’ve looked into your family situation. You’re the type who gambles compulsively and never repents. You’re useless to your family and to society. Losing your wife and children is exactly what you deserve. That outcome was entirely your own doing—don’t blame everything on women.”
“No, that’s not how it was. I made mistakes, but that woman was too heartless. I even thought about it—if she had made a mistake, if she’d gambled and lost money, I wouldn’t have abandoned her. I would have stayed with her and paid off the debt together. It was that woman who was too heartless.”
“Give it a rest!” Lu Wanwan looked at the sick freak with utter contempt. “With how vicious you are, if it ever came to that, you’d have killed your wife long ago. I can only say your wife was smart and knew you well. If she’d stayed with you any longer, her life would have been over long ago.”
“Impossible, I would never do something like that.” Mei Jianyuan was agitated, about to rise from his chair again, but was once more pressed back down by the detective beside him.
Lu Wanwan couldn’t be bothered to argue with him—there’s no reasoning with a madman. She glanced at Gu Xing and asked, “Officer Gu, can I leave now?”
Gu Xing nodded. Lu Wanwan walked to the door, then paused and turned back. “You sick pervert, tell me what songs you like, quick. I’ll use them when I go dance on your grave.”
“Get out! You bitch, get out!” Mei Jianyuan roared. Gu Xing had already struck a nerve, and now Lu Wanwan’s taunts sent his face flushing crimson, the veins on his neck bulging as if they might burst. Lu Wanwan briefly worried he might die from a popped blood vessel.
Still, she was delighted to have riled up the sick pervert this much. Humming lightly, she said, “Fine, if you won’t say, I’ll pick my own. I think ‘Good Days’ works nicely, or maybe ‘Unforgettable Tonight’ would do too.”