Since neither Ji Xun nor Huo Ranyin could persuade the other, they had no choice but to separate again. One stayed on the bed, one sat on the sofa, separated from each other and at peace.
The night became completely quiet. Even the wind dared not make a sound, tiptoeing in and tiptoeing out.
Around four in the morning, the lights next door turned on, and the sounds of talking and washing up could be heard.
They both became alert at the same time, entering work mode.
About fifteen minutes later, Lian Panpan and the middle-aged man checked out and left. They saw Lian Panpan get into the white BMW again. The white BMW returned the way it came, back to Lian Panpan’s residential complex.
Lian Panpan then got out of the BMW, waved goodbye to the middle-aged man, and then climbed back into her room through the window.
It wasn’t over yet.
Huo Ranyin followed the BMW for another stretch, not ending the night’s work until he had confirmed the car’s destination: a residential complex named Shengjing Tianlan.
By this time, the sky was already brightening. The city was beginning to awaken. Various breakfast stalls had rolled up their shutters. Early risers sat at the stalls, taking a bite of a youtiao, drinking a sip of hot soy milk, and then letting out a long puff of white mist, making the winter feel warmer.
Huo Ranyin dropped Ji Xun off outside his complex.
Ji Xun waved at him. “Alright, I’m going upstairs to sleep.”
“Breakfast,” Huo Ranyin reminded him.
“I’ll eat upstairs,” Ji Xun said.
But he was grabbed and held back.
Ji Xun turned around. “What, can’t bear to part with me?”
Huo Ranyin: “I asked Team Leader Yuan. He said you generally haven’t eaten breakfast in the mornings for the past few years.”
“Yuan Yue has no idea if I ate breakfast or not,” Ji Xun was speechless. “Couldn’t you find a better reason to try and trick me?”
“You exposed yourself,” Huo Ranyin said.
“That’s me taking pity on you for getting tired of beating around the bush to show you care,” Ji Xun retorted.
Huo Ranyin: “Let’s eat before you go up. The breakfast stall is right next door.”
“Thanks for your concern, but no thanks,” Ji Xun said, deeply moved, and then refused. “I don’t eat breakfast. Don’t I even have the freedom to eat breakfast or not? Captain Huo, although you really want to be my dad, I really don’t want to be your son.”
“It’s just breakfast.”
“This isn’t breakfast, this is freedom,” Ji Xun said. “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
It was Huo Ranyin’s turn to be speechless.
He was just about to speak when his phone rang. It was a call from the bureau, and it was only seven in the morning.
The call was short.
Huo Ranyin quickly hung up and briefly summarized the content of the call.
“Just now, a silver nitrate milk candy poisoning incident occurred at the Tianwang Nursing Home in Ning City, resulting in two deaths and one injury. The victims were all elderly residents of the nursing home.”
After speaking, he walked towards the car without a moment’s delay. This time, it was Ji Xun who grabbed him.
“Wait, take breakfast with you.”
When Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin rushed to the crime scene, Wen Yangyang and the others had already arrived.
The case was very clear. Surveillance cameras had captured the entire process. The deceased, an elderly man surnamed Li, had added a Little Rabbit milk candy to his coffee in the morning. He took a sip, thought the taste was a bit strange, and asked other elderly people present to help him taste it.
Mr. Li had a rather cantankerous personality. After asking around, only the good-natured Mr. Zhang and Mr. Qian came over to drink.
Mr. Zhang took a small sip and waved his hand, refusing to drink more. He was the sole survivor. Mr. Qian, after drinking one mouthful, tasted it several more times and ultimately died along with Mr. Li after rescue efforts failed.
The Little Rabbit candies were scattered on a tray; the deceased had picked one at random. The coffee had been specifically assigned by a caregiver, Ye Wenhui.
And the caregiver, Ye Wenhui, was also the first person to call for an ambulance. She looked terrified—of course, in the eyes of a criminal police officer, this could be an act.
The trash bag from the elderly residents’ breakfast had been collected by Ye Wenhui and thrown into the large dumpster at the entrance. Luckily, it hadn’t been taken away yet.
Several officers put on gloves and rummaged through it, finding all the candy wrappers. One of the wrappers had a pinhole in it.
“It wasn’t Xin Yongchu and his accomplice,” Huo Ranyin pointed at the candy wrapper and said quietly to Ji Xun.
The pinhole on Lian Dazhang’s candy wrapper was located at the twisted ends of the wrapper, unnoticeable without close inspection. The pinhole on this candy was right in the center.
Ji Xun said, “Then it’s poisoning by someone close by. Unless it’s retaliation against society, this kind of poisoning by an acquaintance always has a clear motive. It’s unlikely to be a random killing; it must be an inevitable event that can identify a specific victim. Therefore, the candy placed on the plate for anyone to take is the killer’s imitation of Xin Yongchu’s method, used to confuse the police—although it’s clumsy, what if it succeeded? The candy poisoning is a huge deal right now. Who knows, maybe all our colleagues at the police station will have a collective drop in IQ, and they could get away scot-free.”
Huo Ranyin raised his hand and rubbed his brow. “This case is simple. Once the forensics lab checks for fingerprint residue on it, and we question everyone present plus Ye Wenhui and investigate their social networks, we can reach a conclusion.”
“Yeah, yeah, everyone knows how to solve a case like that.”
Ji Xun casually picked up a milk candy and was about to put it in his mouth when Huo Ranyin stopped him.
“Don’t touch the evidence at the scene.”
He shrugged with a scoff.
“Listen to me, focus on interrogating Ye Wenhui. Isn’t it much simpler to put the poison in a cup of coffee intended for a specific person than to hide it in candy? Don’t be so rigid and follow procedure. Are you afraid of a wrongful conviction? For a simple case like this, every extra second spent is a waste of taxpayer money.”
But it couldn’t be done that way. This meticulous work was to ensure the chain of evidence was clear and complete, leaving no room for the criminal to get lucky, and also to prevent that one-in-a-million chance of error. The cost of executing justice lay in these very trivial matters and a large amount of manpower.
The nursing home case was a tangled mess that had to be unraveled thread by thread.
Huo Ranyin also didn’t forget to contact the vehicle management bureau to have them check the owner of the BMW.
As for Ji Xun, he didn’t have as much to do. He went to the side, sat down, took out his phone, and started scrolling through Lian Panpan’s Weibo. Lian Panpan liked to post, and aside from various cosplay photos, there were many forwards and some sentimental phrases. Overall, it didn’t stray from the scope of a teenage girl’s interests.
A while later, Huo Ranyin walked over while on a call.
The middle-aged man’s identity was confirmed.
“Chen Jianying, thirty-eight years old this year, lives at Shengjing Tianlan, Building 8, Apartment 2818. He’s a photographer.”
“Got any water?” Ji Xun was still scrolling through Weibo, his hands busy. He looked up in a gap to ask.
Huo Ranyin glanced at him, came back with a bottle of mineral water, twisted it open, and handed it to Ji Xun.
“Thanks.” Ji Xun’s hands were full, so he simply lowered his head and drank a couple of sips from Huo Ranyin’s hand to wet his throat, then said, “Have you found Chen Jianying’s place of origin and past experiences?”
“A rough check. He’s a Ning City local and also attended Ning City University of Science and Technology. On the surface, there’s no overlap with Xin Yongchu or Yi’an County. But he has many records of travel photography. Whether he had any contact with Xin Yongchu during his travels requires further investigation, but that will be difficult.”
“But we can preliminarily judge that there wasn’t much contact,” Ji Xun said. He thought for a moment, then suddenly posed a question, “How did Lian Panpan and Chen Jianying meet?”
Without needing Huo Ranyin to answer, Ji Xun already had a guess in his mind the moment he asked the question.
Lian Panpan was a cosplayer, and Chen Jianying was a photographer.
They most likely met at a place like a fan convention. Afterward, as a photographer and having an intimate relationship with Lian Panpan, he would most likely help her with photoshoots. If that’s the case—
An image surfaced in his mind. In the staff credits that Songliubo tagged when posting cosplay photos, the photographers didn’t change much. One frequently appearing photographer account ID was: UnderTheSun.
UnderTheSun.
Under the sun, one can see a shadow.
He clicked on it, and without a doubt, it was Chen Jianying.
Without much effort, he found Chen Jianying’s WeChat public account in the other’s pinned Weibo post.
He began to search for the public account, and after following it, he found there was a group. He joined the group, and in that group, he found there was a paid group. After getting into the paid group, there was surprisingly an “iron fan” group. This was the core group for die-hard supporters, and entry required an additional verification step, which was to fill out a questionnaire.
Ji Xun: “…”
Huo Ranyin: “What’s wrong?”
“A bit interesting,” Ji Xun said. “It’s three layers deep.”
He received the questionnaire. It wasn’t difficult, just some common questions about fan works, like “Do you know what fan works are?”, “What is the largest fan convention in the country?”, “What is your favorite work?”, “Who is your favorite cosplayer?”, and so on.
Ji Xun filled them out one by one and sent it back.
After waiting a few more minutes, he finally got into the “iron fan” group.
The group had a considerable number of people, over four hundred. Ji Xun browsed the member list and felt it was a bit strange.
They were all male.
Even if more men looked at beautiful cosplayers, it wouldn’t be only men, right?
At this moment, the group admin sent him a private message: “Whose do you want?”
Whose are available? Ji Xun initially wanted to reply with this, but he was afraid of alerting them if he directly mentioned Songliubo. But on second thought, Songliubo had openly tagged Chen Jianying on Weibo, so he felt the two probably weren’t that vigilant.
He replied: “Do you have Songliubo’s?”
Admin: “Yes. Photos 100, videos 300.”
Ji Xun: “…A bit expensive.”
Admin: “Fixed price, no bargaining.”
Ji Xun’s finger tapped the screen twice, and he paid.
Admin: “Received. You have a VPN, right? Know how to use it? It’s fine if you don’t, I have a fool-proof tutorial here, guaranteed to teach you.”
Ji Xun: “I have one, and I know how.”
Admin: “Alright then, turn on your VPN, then click on the link I give you.”
A URL was sent over.
It was a foreign website.
Ji Xun clicked on it. He took only one look before pressing the phone screen off.
Huo Ranyin hadn’t been watching this whole series of operations. He was still communicating with other officers at the scene. It was only now that he felt something was off and cast a strange glance over.
Ji Xun shook his phone. “The good news is, we have enough reason to bring Chen Jianying back to the station for questioning. The bad news is… the kind of bad news you don’t want to know.”
No normal person with even a little sympathy would want to know.
A young girl’s pornographic photos and videos.
