Zhen Wuyu swept his gaze across the place and confirmed there was only one door… He strode in and saw a small door behind the Buddha statue, right next to a recessed rock cave in the mountainside. Going out from the side was a shortcut path. This was usually an old route from long ago, before tourist facilities were developed. The masters used it year-round to go up and down the mountain carrying buckets and shoulder poles to transport daily supplies, but now there were probably very few.
The masters’ living standards had to keep up with the times too.
So this road was especially remote.
Further down the slope was the cedar forest boardwalk for tourists. To the right led toward the back courtyards of other halls.
The front door was for pilgrims; the back door was a stone-slab path for monks to come and go. The route was completely natural, just a hollow in the mountain wall, wide enough for two people to pass.
Zhen Wuyu happened to see that person’s shadow tilt toward a back door and slip in.
Zhen Wuyu followed quickly. The moment he pushed open that small door…
A wave of fragrance rushed at him.
Fresh and sweet, steaming hot, white and fluffy.
Steamed buns?
Zhen Wuyu: “?”
The vegetarian hall’s pastry room was basically empty right now. Only one master who steamed buns had just come in carrying a big bamboo steamer. After setting it down, he smiled warmly at Su Li as she entered.
He was mute, but he recognized Su Li. After making a few hand gestures, he pointed to the hottest buns he had brought over, telling her to eat.
“I’m eating, I’m eating. I didn’t come for that. Go on, get busy. I’ll just take two buns and go. I still need to go down the mountain later.”
As Su Li said this, the mute man nodded. His chubby cheeks broke into a smile. He pressed his palms together, then turned and went out.
After passing the partition door, he saw new pilgrims coming in and bowed in greeting… When he went back out again, his nose twitched slightly. He turned to look at that person’s back and showed a bit of confusion.
This person had a smell.
That sweaty smell, like he had been rushing nonstop, busy with something, and there was also the scent of leaves from the woods.
He wasn’t taking the main road, only small paths?
Were there still people like that now?
Even they, as masters, had started cutting corners.
Su Li was washing her hands, then getting ready to pick buns to eat.
“This brown sugar one… Sugar makes you gain weight, I don’t want it. This white one is good. And there are yam buns and pumpkin buns too? That’s impressive. This little temple is doing so many tricks…”
Food made from pure ingredients with no additives smelled purely fragrant. Just looking at it, it seemed healthy.
Su Li was reaching out her little paw to grab a pumpkin bun when she heard footsteps and also saw, reflected on the red lacquer pillar opposite, the tall shadow of a person.
Coming for buns?
Apparently not. He was heading behind her.
Swish!
As Su Li shifted sharply to the side, the bearded man in a hoodie was pulling a blade from his pocket, stabbing at the spot she had been standing.
He stabbed air.
His narrow eye sockets narrowed. He swung his wrist sideways, slashing toward Su Li’s throat.
Whoosh!
Su Li still hadn’t made a move.
Bang! An empty steamer was grabbed by Zhen Wuyu as he rushed to the doorway and hurled at him.
“Who are you! Police!”
Zhen Wuyu shouted harshly, worried about Su Li. At the same time, the young master outside had just stepped over the threshold. Hearing the shout, he turned back and charged in. When he saw the vicious man splitting the steamer, he was frightened and let out muffled cries, then grabbed a stick nearby and rushed at him. citeturn0search0
That man couldn’t spare attention for him. After splitting the steamer, he kept lunging for Su Li, since she was the closest.
Zhen Wuyu charged from behind too.
All three were moving.
Su Li was the only target.
She swept her eyes over and caught sight of the master… She frowned.
Zhen Wuyu was about to grab Su Li by the collar and yank her back, and in the same instant he drew his gun one-handed.
Su Li had already moved forward.
Footwork, turning sideways, locking the wrist, pressing down to block, kicking the knee, over the shoulder…
Throw!
Bang!
That tall, burly man was dropped in an instant. She flipped her body, sank her weight, pinned her knee and elbow against his back, and yanked his arm up behind him.
Crack!
His shoulder was dislocated.
With a scream of agony, his fingers twisted and the dagger fell to the ground.
From behind, she slapped the back of his head.
“Shut up. Your breathing is dirtying my buns.”
The man, his nose slammed into the ground and bleeding: “…..”
Zhen Wuyu, holding a gun on the killer: “……”
The mute master, clutching a stick and charging in with muffled howls: “?”
The policewoman arrived and cuffed him, but he was a sealed gourd, refusing to speak no matter what.
He was probably the kind of “suicide attacker” bought with money to gamble on a payoff. Whether he succeeded or not, his family would get money. He didn’t care about the legal consequences he himself would bear. This was exactly the kind of person the police had the least way to deal with.
So the channels and range that rich people had for committing crimes were too broad; far more varied than what ordinary people could even imagine.
Zhen Wuyu didn’t even need to ask. He knew the person behind it had already cut contact. You could tell from the killer’s expression: he didn’t regret it, and he wouldn’t talk. He was already caught, he’d definitely be sentenced. He might as well keep his mouth shut so his family could take the money.
Su Li knew that too, so she didn’t care whether they could get anything out of him. She couldn’t even be bothered to ask.
She just washed the grime off her hands.
Zhen Wuyu lowered his voice. “Su Li, I have a not very polite question.”
Su Li gave a slight pout. “We’re old classmates. What can’t you ask? Why talk about polite or not.”
Zhen Wuyu: “Before you came here to pay respects to your mother, did you go kill someone?”
Su Li had finished washing. She was picking up a bun. Hearing that, she turned and stared at him.
“Indeed, very impolite.”
The door was open. Outside was a world of ice and snow. A forest full of dim yellow fallen leaves was funneling wind inside.
She walked to the doorway and closed the door, so the buns wouldn’t get dried out and hard from the wind. She also took a bite of the bun in her hand.
Then she answered Zhen Wuyu.
“If I say I didn’t kill anyone, will your handcuffs stop being used on my delicate little hands?”
Zhen Wuyu: “They really would.”
Su Li raised her brows. Zhen Wuyu held her gaze.
“You came here alone? No one with you? Where’s the driver who was driving you earlier? In the few hours before you came here, where did you go?”
Su Li fell silent.
Twenty minutes later, in the police car at the foot of the mountain, she sat in the back. She glanced at the rearview mirror in front and met Zhen Wuyu’s eyes again in the mirror.
“So your ‘not cuffing’ is real, but you still have to take me away?”
“Fine, take me. But you’re not personally watching me. You just leave me in the back seat. You sit in the front seat eating the buns I took. Is that trust?”
Zhen Wuyu ate a bun and thought it tasted really good. As he ate, he answered, “We’re old classmates.”
Su Li: “Not because you want me to help you watch this pig beside me?”
The man, already cuffed and then wrapped eighteen tight loops with thick handmade hemp rope by the monks: “…..”
These two dog men and women.
The policewoman glanced a few times, then asked hesitantly, “Isn’t this a bit unreasonable?”
A suspect.
Letting one suspect watch another criminal?
Zhen Wuyu: “It’s fine. They’re in opposing camps. When the snipe and the clam fight, the fisherman benefits. We’re the fisherman.”
Su Li sneered. “What if I jump out of the car and run?”
Zhen Wuyu: “I wasn’t sure you were guilty yet. If you run, great, then we can pin a charge on you and say you fled in fear of punishment. Didn’t you succeed in business and have assets? I also think your income isn’t all from your dad. Your mouth is so sharp, you dare clap back at anyone. So is your company listed? Aren’t you afraid it’ll affect the stock market?”
“Rich people aren’t without weaknesses.”
“And how can you be sure you won’t get disfigured if you jump out?”
Then he told the policewoman to drive faster.
Policewoman: “?”
Uh, that was a new line of thinking. No wonder he was an expert.
Su Li: “…..”
Thieving bastard!
The atmosphere in the car was pretty good. It didn’t feel like a suspect who had just been targeted for murder, or a cop who had just learned a key mole had been killed and silenced.
The last time they met eyes in the rearview mirror, Su Li’s lips held a smile, but it wasn’t quite a smile.
Zhen Wuyu chewed his bun. After swallowing the last bite, he looked out the window at the vast white outside, then lowered his head to look at the scene photos Chen Liao had sent back.
Liao Zhengzhi’s corpse had its throat cut, but the body wasn’t in the kitchen.
The policewoman looked at him. At a red light she stopped and also glanced at the rearview mirror, seeing Su Li.
The two women met eyes too. The policewoman pressed her lips into a straight line, while Su Li curled her lips into a smile at her.
Policewoman: “…..”
It was already deep winter, freezing cold. The cellar was even colder than the cold storage Chen Liao had been to.
Huang Xiuling’s corpse was icy.
Liao Zhengzhi’s corpse might have still had warm organs at the time, but now it was definitely cold.
The house had been sealed off with tape. Police surrounded it. Liu Duan and the others arrived in a rush. Following the blood marks found in the kitchen, they tracked them down to the cellar.
A soy paste vat.
The retired forensic old man, known for being neat and proper and praised by everyone, had been stuffed into the soy paste vat, feet up.
Head down.
The wound on his neck was thorough. Blood had poured down and pooled at the bottom of the vat, mixed with pickled cabbage brine. The smell was intense and stinging, the mixed odor making people’s stomachs ache.
Liu Duan and Director Chen stood by the vat, looking down, meeting the eyes of their former colleague.
Liu Duan: “Do you remember the last time you contacted him?”
Director Chen: “After the 315 case, we old guys felt Bai Mian Chang had come out again. We talked. Later we even ate together. Just from that one meal, we smoked three packs of cigarettes, but he didn’t smoke. I thought it was because he was a forensic doctor. Even after retirement he still had professional self-control.”
Liu Duan: “Now it seems it was because there’s a kid at home.”
Director Chen: “After we expanded the scope, we found out his useless son used to get into trouble and got his lower half ruined in a beating. No kids. He married a widow with a son. Their life is stable now… happy.”
Liu Duan: “Looks very happy. I saw the food outside. Fish and meat. The cooking looks pretty good. Not bad for a forensic doctor. If nothing happened, he might’ve been the happiest out of all of us in this life.”
Director Chen: “Is cooking all he’s good at? His professional autopsy skills are pretty good too, aren’t they? Good enough to fake things. Director Zhan’s autopsy definitely had problems! I said it, how did every suspicious person have an alibi, with the time of death locked down perfectly? Isn’t that just controlling suspects’ alibis? I just don’t know whether the person silencing him now is the same person he covered for back then. Bai Mian Chang might not be just one.”
Liu Duan: “Chang ghosts are everywhere… but we don’t have hard proof yet. We can talk here, but once we’re out, we can’t say it. It’s taboo in the circle. If Xiao Pang and the others find out, they might… sigh.”
Director Chen: “There are no outsiders here.”
Chen Liao: “I’m here. I’m not dead.”
Liu Duan: “So you got here first and found it first?”
Chen Liao looked awkward.
Liu Duan and Director Chen understood, but neither said anything, only smiled bitterly.
After the scene was processed for a while, Zhen Wuyu arrived.
After sending the suspect and the criminal back to the station, he didn’t rush to interrogate. He came here first to see the scene.
When he came in and saw the complicated expressions on Liu Duan’s faces, he didn’t care. Before he came, he already knew these two old foxes could read something from Chen Liao.
But it didn’t matter.
Didn’t Zhan Qing’s private actions back then also face coworkers’ misunderstanding and hostility?
And the facts proved she was right.
It was just that the enemy was too strong, and not only did teammates betray her, the teammates who didn’t betray her were still weak, so she died.
“The murder weapon has been found. It was on this rack. The blood wasn’t even wiped. The killer killed him in the kitchen. This should be where she was standing then. The door was open at the time.”
Liu Duan and the others had examined the scene. He pointed behind the kitchen door. Liao Zhengzhi loved cleanliness. There wouldn’t be dust footprints on the floor. There were no marks on the door panel either. The reason they knew someone hid there was because the cut on the neck came from behind. Based on the blood spray lines and where the victim stood, they could guess the killer first hid behind the door, then from behind…
“After he fell, the blood was still spraying. The spray even hit the back of the door panel.”
That wasn’t the important part. The important part was that confirming the killer had hidden in the house ahead of time and the time difference in tailing Liao Zhengzhi would help trace the killer’s movements. This was a retirement housing compound, and the surveillance conditions were decent.
“With blood spraying like that, wouldn’t the killer get blood on her? She didn’t care at all?”
That was too arrogant.
“If it was red clothing… would it not be obvious?”
Everyone thought of Bai Mian Chang.
Zhen Wuyu stood in the middle of the kitchen for a while, then went out to look at the cellar.
Chen Liao: “There’s something I don’t understand. Why would the killer move the body to the cellar and stuff it in the vat on purpose, to scare people and create a Xue Ling Dao-style murder effect?”
Liu Duan already knew what happened on Su Li’s side. He said, “Why can’t it be? If it’s to drag the case back to that year, imitating the crime can also be a form of revenge.”
Zhen Wuyu didn’t respond to Liu Duan. He kept checking the surroundings. Soon, he walked to the firewood pile in the backyard.
After looking for a moment, he said, “Something’s wrong here. There’s no earthen stove in his house. Why is there this much firewood? Help me move it. There might be something inside.”
Everyone stepped forward and removed the logs one by one. After a while, Zhen Wuyu pulled something out from a gap.
“A camera? Wired.”
“It might be routed underground. There might be others. Find them all… maybe it captured the killer.”
After searching the whole house, they found three cameras, all installed extremely covertly. Even Liao Zhengzhi’s son didn’t know, and didn’t know where the feed connected, but that wasn’t hard for the station.
The technical department quickly found the endpoint: there was a spare desktop computer in a private office in the basement.
Liao Zhengzhi was an insider. His technical level and higher education were enough that even in old age he had solid criminal investigation awareness.
Of course, whether he made his home so tight and cautious to protect himself or his grandson, no one dared say. They still hadn’t found hard evidence of his crimes.
Until…
“There are only recordings. Today’s recordings are all here. Let me find it…”
“I got here at nine. It was very quiet. His neighbor said he usually comes home and starts prepping ingredients and cooking, then goes to pick up the kid. There was no sound, so maybe he wasn’t in the kitchen. I walked around to the back yard. From behind, I saw the kitchen window was open, and his coat was hanging on the rack inside… I felt something was off. I called a few times, no response. I climbed over the wall and went in… That should’ve been 9:10. Pull the time back…”
“This!”
The video was paused.
Eight o’clock sharp.
A red figure walked down calmly from the back mountain path. She even used a key to open the back yard gate, and walked openly through the yard… This was captured by the camera in the firewood pile, and it also caught the strange white mask on her face.
The second time she was captured was when she dragged Liao Zhengzhi’s body and shoved it into the cellar.
Liu Duan: “Here, pause.”
He suddenly interrupted the technician, pulled the video back a bit, and froze the frame at a spot.
He looked at Zhen Wuyu.
“Can you recognize it?”
Zhen Wuyu leaned in and looked at the bracelet on that snow-white wrist.
“I can. Su Li has one too. She’s been wearing it these past days, even now.”
Such a clear pointer. Surveillance footage, hair, fingerprints, a bracelet. On Su Li’s side, there wasn’t even an alibi; she had been alone the whole time.
When everyone went quiet, Liu Duan laid it out. “Su Li, right now almost all suspicion points to her. Unless she has an alibi, we really have to fully investigate her.”
If he could say that, it meant the station had already confirmed that after Su Li left, she was alone for a long time.
Zhen Wuyu thought of the policewoman, but that was normal. She definitely would report back to the bureau.
“Her suspicion is huge. Zhen Wuyu, you can’t let personal ties affect the investigation.”
Zhen Wuyu: “I don’t have personal ties with her. Since there’s suspicion, let’s investigate when we get back.”
He looked at the footage again, then had the technician stand up. After sitting down, he typed rapidly for a while, then said a few words.
“Interesting. Other than these camera recordings, there’s nothing else.”
“If Liao Zhengzhi installed these cameras to protect himself or his grandson, this computer was his last card. He should’ve hidden confidential things here, including the old case, and very likely bank cards tied to bribes. But now, there are records showing it was emptied.”
“Can you restore those records?”
He asked the technician.
“I’m not sure. It depends on whether he formatted the drive or did another kind of deletion. And whether it was a basic format or…”
They couldn’t understand the technical details, but the technician said that as long as they had time, they’d find a way to recover it. The intruder hadn’t had enough time. They likely couldn’t do too many complicated operations. But the person left no fingerprints at all, timed it exactly to Liao Zhengzhi’s return home, operated the computer, then calmly hid behind the door waiting for him to come cook. Clearly, they were extremely familiar with his routine, controlling timing to the second.
Most importantly, they had the back door key.
Either the killer had infiltrated before, stolen the key, made a copy, and learned the house layout, or they had interacted with Liao Zhengzhi many times. They were an acquaintance who had obtained his key directly.
“Check his son too. Often the biggest beneficiary isn’t the person himself, but the person he cares about most.”
While waiting, Zhen Wuyu also checked the basement.
Even retired, a forensic doctor’s professional habits remained.
There were quite a few bottles and jars, and also some insect and plant specimens.
Midway, the trace examiner said they had collected long female hair, and there were fingerprints on the murder weapon.
“Take it back for testing.”
“Is Su Li still at the station?”
Liu Duan and Director Chen were burning with urgency and were about to head back. They turned to look at Zhen Wuyu.
“I’ll go back in a bit.”
Liu Duan stared at him, wanting to say something, but quickly left with Director Chen.
Zhen Wuyu knew those two definitely had something they were hiding from him. They also had strange prejudice and hostility toward Su Li.
He watched their backs for a while, then kept examining the specimens.
His gaze lingered on a butterfly specimen for a long time.
The label said: Birdwing.
Chen Liao stood beside the technician for half an hour. The technician suddenly brightened. “Found it!”
Chen Liao was happy too. He turned his head and Zhen Wuyu was already gone.
One specimen was missing from the rack.
When Su Li was drinking water, the door was pushed open. She lifted her head and saw Liu Duan and Director Chen’s faces.
She looked at them, smiled, set down the cup, and interlaced her fingers.
“So it’s you.”
“The uncles from back then. I’m calling you that right, aren’t I?”
“Since you’re here, please sit.”