Zhen Wuyu didn’t even put on his coat. Wearing only a thin black knit sweater, he walked quickly through the bureau.
Bang, he pushed the door open.
Chief Liu Duan, the policewoman, and several technical backbones were all in this technical department. They were checking student information from the school and also checking information on everyone in the system who had participated in the investigation back then.
They had just found a bit of something. Liu Duan held materials and came toward the door, nearly getting his face hit by the sudden push.
“Hey! You brat, what are you doing? Why so rushed!”
Zhen Wuyu controlled his breathing. “Any results?”
“This is the list. There are six kids with relatives or blood ties inside the system studying at Baimu Middle School.”
Zhen Wuyu frowned. “So many?”
“What about the ones who participated in the case?”
“Zero.”
Zhen Wuyu froze.
“Not a single one?”
Impossible.
Were their earlier judgments all wrong?
Seeing the anxiety between Zhen Wuyu’s brows, Liu Duan was surprised. He ushered him in, closed the door, and handed him the files.
“Look at the list. It’s government or other departments. There’s no info on participants from now or back then.”
“We’re disappointed too. We thought we could find the person’s identity this way…”
Zhen Wuyu gave Liu Duan a long look, then lowered his head to read. In his heart, a thought even surfaced: being restrained everywhere, every time they found something it was cut off immediately, could it be because…
Seeing the atmosphere turn strange, the chief, with dark circles and having been tormented by this result too, said, “I’m thinking of a possibility.”
“What if it’s a child that isn’t counted as an official blood relationship?”
What?
The chief said, “A restructured family, but no marriage, or married, and it’s a stepson or stepdaughter’s child. A non-blood relation across a generation. It wouldn’t show up in the records. Especially those people back then, some are retired already. Do you think they’re all still in office like us? After the case result was set back then, the pressure was huge. How many people resigned…”
He suddenly stopped.
He sighed heavily.
Liu Duan’s expression looked like he’d swallowed several bitter gourds. He instinctively went to reach for a cigarette, didn’t find one. He looked up and saw it in Zhen Wuyu’s hand, and Zhen Wuyu stuffed it into his own pocket.
Clearly not letting him smoke.
Damn it, was this guy a cop or a thief?
“Then we can only expand the scope. It’ll take more time, and we have to be careful not to let the person notice. We don’t even know if we can confirm it today. Did you find anything from the files you read last night?” Liu Duan asked.
Zhen Wuyu: “No.”
“I suggest that while you investigate, you also visit the homes of those who participated in the investigation back then, and see whether they’re still safe.”
“Whether someone has been silenced.”
“Of course, the one who gets silenced will definitely be the one we’re looking for, so it’s also a passive verification of identity.”
Everyone present was shocked.
The chief and Liu Duan both looked at him.
Zhen Wuyu turned and left.
Before he came, his thinking was: Chen Wanrong was so calm. If she knew that mole might be exposed, no, Qi Xuan had already been arrested, and Qi Xuan was driven to kill Qi Meijuan because Qi Meijuan had seen Chen Qing meet that mole. Lin Zong and the others knew too. Then how could the other side not suspect that after Qi Xuan was arrested, he might expose information about the mole? Even if they weren’t sure he had seen the person’s face, Chen Wanrong and her group would still make a conservative move… the probability of silencing was ninety percent.
In the car, Zhen Wuyu didn’t bring Chen Liao. He only brought the policewoman.
Right now, he didn’t know who to trust.
But he had a hypothesis.
So before he and the policewoman left, he texted Chen Liao.
“Can I trust you?”
Chen Liao replied with a question mark, then asked what he could do.
Zhen Wuyu: “I’ve read all the files. In the five Xue Ling Dao cases, the only people who ran through all of them from beginning to end, and whose roles could create the effect that the cases had no suspect who met the conditions to commit the crimes, are only four people.”
Those detailed evidence and clues from back then were hard to judge true or false now. The scene was long gone. He didn’t do that high-difficulty work. He only made a broad judgment based on the effect the mole could achieve back then, then reversed to infer identity.
Chen Liao: “?”
Zhen Wuyu: “Director Zhan, the current Director Chen, the forensic doctor Liao Zhengzhi.”
There was actually also Liu Duan, but considering the relationship between Liu Duan and Chen Liao, Zhen Wuyu could only not mention him.
Zhan Qing led the direction of the investigation. Director Chen was the team leader and held frontline details. Liu Duan was second-hand and could let things slide and receive secrets from the first two. As for Liao Zhengzhi, he could falsify the most core autopsy elements, like misjudging time of death, or muddling drug detection in the body.
All four could most decisively collude with Bai Mian Chang and produce crucial impact on the investigation.
And so, the unsolved cases were born.
So after thinking it through, with no one in hand, Zhen Wuyu still chose the person who seemed most trustworthy at the moment: Chen Liao. In earlier investigations, Chen Liao hadn’t been deeply involved. When information leaked a few times, he hadn’t known the inside story. That could eliminate a certain level of suspicion.
The ones with suspicion were Liu Duan and Director Chen.
Chen Liao: You want me to watch Director Chen?!!
Dear heavens, was he worthy?
The station’s instant-noodle mom was going to supervise the chief?
Zhen Wuyu: No. Go watch that Liao Zhengzhi.
Among the five cases, the strangest one, and the one Bai Mian Chang was involved in the most, was the fifth case, Xue Ling Night Walk.
Zhan Qing’s case.
And Zhan Qing’s death truly left no trace in the snow. There wasn’t even evidence of the killer’s method.
The earlier victims were decapitated or suffocated.
Zhan Qing, though, died by ghostly hands. And the biggest difference was: she wasn’t bound by that strange rope.
She was burned alive.
How was that done?
Could it be…
There was a problem with the autopsy?
The policewoman drove. Zhen Wuyu kept reading the files with his head down.
Halfway, he picked up his cup and drank, asking how far.
“Twenty minutes. The mountain road is hard, and it’s snowing, so we have to go slower.”
“I’m surprised,” the policewoman suddenly said.
Zhen Wuyu glanced at her. “That I only called you?”
“No. You called me because you need my guidance. I understand that.”
“I’m surprised you let me drive.”
Zhen Wuyu didn’t understand.
The policewoman smiled. “Not many men are willing to let women drive, even if I’m a policewoman.”
Zhen Wuyu vaguely got it. He said lightly, “Here, or in many places, even in our whole era, there are deep-rooted biases. Ignore them and keep moving forward. When you’re in a high position, even if the people below you hold bias, under the condition that they’re looking up at you, that bias isn’t worth mentioning. It’s more like a joke.”
“You won’t even see his bias. Who gets used to looking down at people?”
When she was a policewoman facing ordinary citizens, with public authority, even if someone dared to despise her, she only needed to say a few words and hardly anyone dared to challenge her.
That was the intimidation brought by status and authority.
Without authority, men and women were both mediocre and weak, looking down on whoever, despising whoever.
People always said public servants should be close to ordinary people… but without authority, the efficiency of law enforcement would even be negative, which also wasn’t reasonable.
The policewoman’s smile deepened.
“I like that.”
“When I was in police academy, I had a cousin who told me another viewpoint.”
Zhen Wuyu didn’t usually like small talk, but in this place, the origin of the case was deeply tied to women’s suffering. He cared a bit. Since the policewoman was local, he wanted to understand more, so he asked what viewpoint.
“Don’t care what others think. It depends on how I want to see it. If I’m optimistic, when someone takes care of women, it saves me trouble. I treat them as the driver and enjoy being free.”
“If I’m not optimistic, then they’re discriminating against me, with fixed bias. If I want to resist, then I compete with driving skill and resume. If I want to drive, I drive.”
Zhen Wuyu raised his brows. “Your cousin is someone who can do big things.”
“She got married.”
Zhen Wuyu: “?”
“When I was still very small, the year she got into university, she went to work at a construction site to earn tuition. She was bullied by an outside merchant. Everyone thought it was shameful, family ugliness that couldn’t be spoken of. My aunt threatened suicide. They forced her to marry that person.”
“Later, while pregnant, she jumped into a big river just after it thawed in spring.”
“At the time I thought, if only she could drive, if only she could drive that old man’s car and escape from here. But my sister couldn’t. She never had a chance to learn to drive, even though she was born as someone who could do big things.”
“A few years later, my male cousin bought a house in Changlin City with money, got married, had kids. The kid is already in middle school.”
“Actually you might not know… women here are like mountain ginseng. No matter what the quality is, they’re worth money, and they can be sold for money. The main thing is, there’s a market.”
The policewoman held the steering wheel. “I learned to drive and became police because I wanted to see whether they dare sell a policewoman.”
Zhen Wuyu was silent for a long time, then said one sentence.
“On the way back, you’re still the one driving.”
It was snowing, but the snow was small, so going in and out was still convenient, just crowded.
The market was noisy, packed, lively.
Zhen Wuyu felt that Su Ye wanting to develop here wasn’t without natural advantages. The medicinal materials market here was decent, and tourists from other places came too.
But he also noticed something.
All these medicinal materials were very young.
Large quantity, but young, yet extremely expensive.
This wasn’t a good sign. It was even a false prosperity, and it would definitely backfire in the future.
After walking around, Zhen Wuyu asked about local forest digging. The policewoman chuckled. “Consultant Zhen, how do you know these all came from the mountains?”
Zhen Wuyu froze, then looked at the locals shouting about pure hundred-year wild mountain ginseng…
He couldn’t manage the market here. It wasn’t within his authority. The two of them asked around for a long time. With her local experience, the policewoman also judged that the ones in the photo really were pure mountain ginseng.
Zhen Wuyu: “He wouldn’t send fake ones, unless he can’t tell. But he’s local, so he definitely knows.”
Policewoman: “Not many people can sell that much good-quality ginseng. Looking at these people bluffing and talking nonsense, we might get fooled. I’ll ask the forest ranger.”
She wasn’t an ordinary policewoman. She had connections locally. No one dared bully her.
She had helped Zhen Wuyu before.
One call, and she quickly reached a local small-time boss, basically a big player in the local market.
At the very least, the moment Zhen Wuyu saw the man’s stall, he knew the mustached guy was capable.
The man was very respectful to the policewoman, truly respectful. He probably had been helped by her in a case before. If she smoked, he would have shoved a carton of Da Zhonghua cigarettes at her.
Zhen Wuyu thought: if his Shifu Liu Duan were here, he would definitely refuse the hardship…
Policewoman: “Cut the nonsense. Stop that. Look at this ginseng. Did you sell it?”
“Huh? That much? Big buyer. That’s a crazy move. But I didn’t sell it. If I had, I’d definitely remember.”
Policewoman looked around. “Right. Yours isn’t this good.”
The mustached guy got angry. “Who says! It definitely came from me. Others can’t get this good wild stuff. I mean I wasn’t there. Maybe one of my people sold it.”
He turned and asked several aunties and uncles who watched the stall. Finally he found a chubby auntie in a tiger-head hat.
She wore a colorful padded coat, a tiger-head hat, and was gnawing on a roasted sweet potato. The warm smell was strong. She looked at the photo and suddenly understood.
“Oh, this. I remember. Someone bought it. The appetite was huge. I even suspected they were, you know, doing that wild-route business.”
Zhen Wuyu: “What?”
Policewoman: “Smuggling.”
Zhen Wuyu: “…”
Zhen Wuyu asked the price and what the buyer looked like.
“Was it a young girl, very pretty, looks super rich, dumb and easy to scam, always saying I’m rich, just give me good goods… she looks like this.”
“No. Kid, are you here to arrange a blind date, or to kidnap a brain-dead rich girl? And you’re even pulling out a photo. Are you a decent person?”
The aunt got wary, her big eyes staring like bells.
The policewoman couldn’t hold it and laughed.
Zhen Wuyu was embarrassed and quietly put the photo away.
The aunt didn’t like him. She turned to the policewoman. “This ginseng was good quality. Girl, you’re local, you know the price. Just this box, you can’t do it without seventy or eighty thousand. In the end the buyer paid ninety thousand.”
“It wasn’t a brain-dead rich girl. It was an old man.”
“Wrapped up like a bear, wearing sunglasses, mink fur, looks like a businessman, wrinkly skin. You used to see a lot of that kind of person ten-plus years ago…”
Zhen Wuyu and the policewoman were startled.
“Was he in a wheelchair?”
“What wheelchair. No. He walked. Stronger than me.”
Zhen Wuyu thought. He had the aunt compare the man’s height and build…
In the end they concluded: even with heavy clothes, it was an old man around one seventy, thin, fairly clean, no old-man smell, spent big, attitude was okay, just a bit strange.
“When he bought the ginseng, my granddaughter was playing ball nearby. He stared for so long it gave me chills. I was scared he was a kidnapper, so I hurried and told her to go inside.”
Zhang Baoli?
But this person definitely had cancer. Could it be his son?
Did Zhang Baoli have a daughter or granddaughter who had an accident?
The files didn’t mention it.
Zhen Wuyu knew that this kind of old information was the hardest to check. Without field visits, it was hard to get first-hand info that kept up with reality.
Especially around the 1990s, records weren’t complete.
“He can’t be faking cancer. That’s too easy to expose,” the policewoman said, confused. Zhen Wuyu was also thinking, until the aunt suddenly added something.
“Oh right, that day he also gave some candy. He pulled it out of his pocket and gave it to my granddaughter. I didn’t dare let her eat it then. After he left, I felt like I’d overthought it, so I ate one myself. It was really tasty.”
Local economy was bad. In many villages, kids hadn’t even eaten candy.
Childhood differences varied so much between places it was hard to imagine.
So even if the aunt had misgivings, she still kept the candy. Later she gave it to the child. She even didn’t want to finish it all at once.
After she spoke, she went inside and brought out two pieces.
“I ate it and then I knew I’d wronged him…” the aunt said as she handed the candy over, saying one each.
A kidnapper wouldn’t spend ninety thousand on ginseng.
Real money proved everything.
The aunt knew that, so she didn’t throw the candy away. She was just on guard back then; it was instinctive guard created by that harsh environment.
Zhen Wuyu looked at the candy in his hand and thought. “You did wrong him. He didn’t want to kidnap anyone. This candy is expensive. It’s foreign.”
Zhen Wuyu didn’t use “imported,” but “foreign,” because for the era the aunt lived through, “foreign” was easier to understand.
So it was a misunderstanding.
That old man really liked the little granddaughter, so he gave her candy. And at his age, he wouldn’t keep candy on him just for himself.
Carrying candy might be because the child who loved candy would never come back.
It became a habit and an obsession.
Policewoman: “This kind of candy… I don’t think it’s sold locally. The big malls in Changlin probably don’t have it either.”
Because it was a niche brand. Maybe people with money could buy it, but there weren’t many platforms. And someone who carried it around…
Did it point back to Su Li again?
The policewoman, probably having watched too many costume dramas, said wildly, “Disguised as a man, disguised as old, possible?”
The height seemed to match.
Su Li was tall too.
As for appearance, makeup and gear could support it, especially since the aunt said he was wrapped like a bear. Even his own mother might not recognize him.
Zhen Wuyu: “Not likely. Her features are too feminine. How could she turn into an old man? Just look at her bare face and you’ll know.”
Policewoman: “Expert Zhen, you might have zero understanding of what ‘bare face’ means. What I’m wearing today is also bare face.”
Zhen Wuyu: “…Didn’t you just not wash your face? You put on makeup?”
Policewoman: “……”
Fine. Great.
She’d drive the car into a ditch on the way back.
Zhen Wuyu was silent for a long time and was about to leave when the mustached guy came over, holding two lively under-ice fish, saying he wanted to treat them to iron-pot stewed big fish.
They had no time and were about to refuse, when the mustached guy glanced at the photo in Zhen Wuyu’s hand, froze, and said, “I’ve seen this rich lady. Your friend?”
Zhen Wuyu turned. “Seen her? A few days ago?”
Mustached guy: “About a week ago. She bought a bunch of medicine. Super expensive.”
The policewoman’s eyes lit up. “Mountain ginseng? Didn’t you say it wasn’t sold from your hands?”
Mustached guy: “Not ginseng. This. This is even more expensive.”
The policewoman and Zhen Wuyu looked at what he pointed at.
“Lingzhi,” she said.
Why was she buying lingzhi?
Mustached guy: “She said it was to help her dad’s kidneys. She paid one hundred fifty thousand in one go.”
The policewoman was shocked. “Kidneys, and she bought lingzhi?”
Zhen Wuyu was also silent. That high a price, was it gold?
He almost didn’t recognize money anymore.
But thinking of the Su family wealth counted in hundreds of millions, he could understand Su Li’s money-burning.
It still didn’t match even one day of their deposit interest.
The mustached guy smiled shyly, a bit embarrassed. “I recommended deer antler. She insisted it wasn’t environmentally friendly and wasn’t good for animal protection… told me to recommend something else. So I pushed lingzhi. She liked it and bought a box.”
A box.
A rich lady’s spending style was just that plain and simple.
The policewoman got mad. “That’s consumer fraud.”
The mustached guy was scared of her, but argued anyway. “How can you say that? Lingzhi is good for the body. Once the body is strong, isn’t it the same no matter what you’re supplementing?”
“I guarantee her dad will be super strong.”
“Not just kidney weakness. Even infertility, after eating my lingzhi, he can give birth to seven Calabash Brothers…”
The policewoman reached for her cuffs, ready to arrest this dog. Zhen Wuyu stopped her, because the man also muttered that the customer wasn’t dissatisfied, so what could police say. And today, the customer even greeted him.
“Today?”
“Yeah. Half an hour ago. I even saw her.”
Mountain temple.
Unlike the lively market scene at the foot of the mountain, the temple felt quiet.
Well, that was the side hall’s Buddha hall. The main hall for praying for children and wealth was very lively.
This side was the memorial hall.
For the dead and burial.
It seemed to always be quiet here.
Zhen Wuyu stood outside the hall door. Across the smoky haze and the threshold that separated Buddha from the human world, he saw her worshipping Buddha.
A slender figure, hazy and drifting.
He didn’t go in. He planned to wait for her to come out, but his phone rang, and Chen Liao’s panicked voice came through.
Liao Zhengzhi was dead!
Zhen Wuyu frowned and listened. “I know. You watch the scene first. Call Liu Duan and the others over… I, I’m over here. The biggest suspect is also here…”
He turned his head.
The person inside was gone.
The rich-lady suspect who told him last night she wanted to be a police officer, and who today had huge suspicion of murder, was gone.
Ran?!