Besides managing the household and taking care of her child, Wei Zhenzhu had a small profession.
She called it a “profession,” while her family called it “daydreaming.”
She wanted to be a blogger. Before she got married, besides her regular clerical work, she was a blogger. At that time, her blog was quite lively. Every time she posted something, she would consistently get twenty to thirty thousand clicks and two to three hundred comments.
She put her heart into managing her blog.
Later, she got older.
When she turned thirty, then thirty-five, her family called her a pervert, a disgrace. She went on blind dates and got married, finding a husband.
Her husband was in the writing profession, which had a slight connection to her dream. He was also a man of status with a considerable salary. They lived in a big house. To coordinate with her husband’s work and help him collect and process materials, at his request, she quit her clerical job and focused on the family.
Her family’s anger turned to smiles. Every time she went back to her parents’ home, she was warmly received. But the good times didn’t last. When she gave birth to a daughter with a hearing impairment, their smiles were tinged with sorrow, and they began to urge her to secretly have another child. When she expressed her desire to start blogging again, her family’s faces were once again covered in frost. The disgust they had shown before her marriage reappeared on their faces.
“You’re in your forties, why are you still daydreaming?”
“Just take good care of your husband and child. How do you have the leisure for this? You don’t even know how to dress up usually. You should be worried your husband will leave you.”
“You just live off your husband, and you haven’t even given him a healthy child. How do you have the face to think about other things? As a woman, it’s proper to be more considerate of your husband.”
Being a good wife and a good mother for a lifetime would be nice, right?
But.
“My husband wants to kill me. Because I know his secret.”
She typed this line on her blog. In her mind flashed the photos she had taken of her husband and Gao Shuang’s affair.
However, more terrifying than her husband wanting to kill her, more terrifying than the secret, was perhaps the number of clicks that had not increased by even one that afternoon.
She cried out in the empty room, shouting for help, but no one responded.
After confirming that Mo Nai had left in the owner’s car, the next focus was to contact the traffic management bureau and retrieve surveillance footage from the crime scene onwards to track the Romeo 4C and see which direction it went.
This task, for now, did not seem difficult to complete. The villa area was a high-end residential community with clear surveillance along the roads. In addition, the sports car’s distinctive appearance made the investigation not difficult. That afternoon, Huo Ranyin and his team received news, and along with it came other timeline clues about the male and female owners from the surveillance footage:
The female owner’s Romeo 4C entered the community at 9:08 PM last night.
The male owner’s Audi A4 entered the community at 7:12 PM last night.
In other words, they should both have still been alive at this time.
The surveillance at the community’s main and back gates did not capture Mo Nai’s entry. However, the person in charge of the community, under repeated questioning, said rather embarrassedly that although theirs was a high-end community, some homeowners liked to take a small path through the green belt. The property management had installed surveillance there several times, but it had been secretly dismantled and destroyed by different people.
The reason for this was obvious.
“But an outside thief wouldn’t know about that, right? It’s very hidden,” the person in charge said. “It’s because there haven’t been any theft cases that we temporarily compromised. But we will definitely go and install it immediately.”
At 11:45 PM, the Romeo 4C left the community, headed north out of Ning City, and entered the nearby Wushan Scenic Area, which has the highest altitude in the area, near where Lu Ping’s body had been dumped last time.
However, this time it wasn’t the garbage dump, but the entire large mountain range.
Wushan was very high. Although there was surveillance on the highway leading into it, there was none on the winding mountain roads.
Such a large mountain, with all sorts of small trails used by hikers that didn’t require going through the main entrance, made the search workload appalling.
By the time Ji Xun and the others met up with the people from Liucheng Prison on Wushan, it was truly a case of fellow countrymen meeting, tears streaming down their faces. The tears were not necessarily from sentimentality, but possibly from anger.
However, no matter how painful it was, the work that needed to be done could not be done sloppily.
The people from Liucheng Prison, them, and a group of armed police, divided the mountain into sections to search.
Tan Mingjiu’s complaints were simply irrepressible. He spoke directly on the second team’s channel:
“Are those guys from Liucheng Prison useless? A perverted serial killer like Mo Nai, yet they said he had good performance every year in prison, gave him awards, and even let him assist in managing a group of inmates. How to manage? Manage a string of perverted serial killer disciples and grand-disciples? Don’t tell me the prison guards have some secret dealings with him!”
Although it was true that Liucheng Prison letting someone escape was indeed incompetent, Tan Mingjiu’s statement cast too wide a net. According to Huo Ranyin’s temper, he would definitely have spoken up to stop him.
He had personally tested this, and it was always effective.
Then, having been assigned to the same group as Huo Ranyin and walking behind him, Ji Xun waited and waited, but Huo Ranyin’s voice never came. He couldn’t help but glance at him in surprise, only to see Huo Ranyin’s expression was calm. He had clearly heard everything, but couldn’t be bothered to say a single word.
…So that treatment of being repeatedly corrected and warned is reserved exclusively for me?
Ji Xun was speechless for a moment.
Huo Ranyin sensed his gaze, but misunderstood. “Regretting it? It’s cold on the mountain. You didn’t have to come along for the mountain search in the first place. With you, we’re not one more; without you, we’re not one less.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s getting a bit dark. It might rain later. While you’re not far from the main road, you should hurry back and take a taxi.” Huo Ranyin was already at the search site. It wouldn’t be proper for him to turn back and send someone off, but he had already made arrangements for Ji Xun.
Sometimes Ji Xun felt that in Huo Ranyin’s eyes, he was like a child. Otherwise, why would Huo Ranyin always trouble himself to think so thoroughly for him? He smiled. “Captain Huo, this is our first date. Are you asking me to leave first?”
Huo Ranyin was taken aback.
“Although it’s different from what I expected, it’s still a mountain, we’re still climbing, and it’s still the two of us…”
“Woof!” The body-sniffing dog held by Huo Ranyin suddenly barked.
Ji Xun squatted down and patted the dog’s head. “Yes, and you, and two corpses waiting to meet us.”
Then he stood up again and concluded, “Overall, it’s a date that fits your profession quite well, don’t you think?”
Huo Ranyin seemed to curve his lips into a smile.
When he smiled, it was always like the revival of a cold winter, like ripples on spring water. “Ji Xun, are you very interested in this case?”
“The way you say it, it sounds like I came up the mountain with you for a date with the dead…”
“Aren’t you?”
“…” Ji Xun was at a loss for words for a moment.
To say it was all for the dead, not really. To say it was all for Huo Ranyin… it was obvious Huo Ranyin didn’t believe it either. There were always some reasons here and some reasons there, which was what made things ambiguous and vague.
They didn’t talk anymore and continued forward.
In the extremely boring mountain search, only Tan Mingjiu’s incessant chatter could relieve some of the loneliness.
Before long, Tan Mingjiu’s voice sounded again on their team channel. The longer he was in the cold wind, the more his anger was like lava about to erupt. “And that package found at the courier station—Mo Nai just used one package to lead that bunch of police from Ning City to Chuncheng again. Even I know that the blatant package was definitely Mo Nai’s diversionary tactic. Otherwise, a wanted criminal, where would he get the guts to write his own name on the delivery slip?!”
“Today, your IQ is at its peak,” Ji Xun mocked. He had had doubts about this package before. It was just that it wasn’t Huo Ranyin’s case, so it wasn’t appropriate to say much. Besides, it wasn’t as if the Liucheng side had no doubts at all. But it was a matter of utmost urgency, to the point where they couldn’t spare any manpower or resources. Regardless of whether it was real or fake, they still had to go and take a look. If it was fake, it would just be a wasted trip. But what if it was real?
“Of course!” Tan Mingjiu snorted.
The sky gradually darkened. By the time the sun was about to set, the sky was like an overturned inkstone full of ink. The blue sky was instantly soaked black. Then, large drops of water poured down from the sky.
It was raining heavily.
Of course, they couldn’t stop just because of this.
Everyone put on their ponchos and continued to search.
Ji Xun’s equipment was more complete. He had also brought some plastic bags. He gave two to Huo Ranyin, tied them over their shoes to prevent rainwater from getting into their pants and shoes, and then continued to walk forward.
As the light dimmed, the visibility ahead also became lower and lower, and climbing the mountain naturally became more and more difficult. As they were walking, suddenly, Ji Xun’s vision blurred—
It wasn’t him who swayed, but Huo Ranyin, who was two steps ahead of him. Huo Ranyin had stepped on a piece of soft soil. The soil slid down, taking Huo Ranyin with it in a sudden slip!
In a flash, Ji Xun lunged forward and hugged Huo Ranyin’s sliding body.
He was dragged down for a distance, and then the two of them fell heavily to the ground. The heavy rain hammered on their ponchos. Ji Xun couldn’t care about anything else. He reached his hand into Huo Ranyin’s raincoat, fumbling over his body, from his chest all the way down to his calf and ankle—
“I’m fine,” Huo Ranyin’s voice sounded in the rain. “No sprains, no fractures.”
His voice was a bit rushed, and he was panting. Ji Xun could hear his heart pounding, and his own heart was also pounding.
The flashlight used for pathfinding had rolled to the side, its orange beam illuminating a ghostly distance. The leash of the body-sniffing dog in Huo Ranyin’s hand had loosened the moment he slipped. The dog was not startled. Well-trained, it seemed to understand that its two human companions had had a small accident, so it sat not far from the flashlight, tilting its head and letting out an occasional whimper.
Ji Xun slowly let out a sigh of relief.
When his mind relaxed from the sudden tension of the accident, he realized that they were too close.
The mountain wind was cold, the rainwater wet.
But they were in the dark mountain forest, on the ground, pressed tightly together.
He could feel Huo Ranyin’s body, and Huo Ranyin could also feel his. The heat of their bodies, almost against their own will, was glued together as if seeking solace.
Ji Xun suddenly realized that compared to human reason, the body was animalistic, animalistic and honest.
Ji Xun was the first to stand up and create distance. He stepped back, steadied himself. Before he could reach out to Huo Ranyin, Huo Ranyin had already gotten up and stood straight on his own.
“It’s good that you’re okay,” Ji Xun made a small joke. “Non-combat attrition is somewhat embarrassing.”
As he spoke, he picked up the flashlight that had fallen on the ground, shone it around, and then aimed at a relatively smooth and suitable branch of a nearby tree, directly breaking it off from the trunk.
This branch was a good fit for his hand, perfect for a hiking stick.
But Ji Xun had his own way of using it. He broke off the small twigs on the branch one by one, then handed one end to Huo Ranyin.
“I’m more familiar with this part of Wushan than you are. Hold on to this hiking stick. I’ll walk in front, you walk behind.”
“Ji Xun, I can manage,” Huo Ranyin frowned.
“Of course I know you can. What can’t Captain Huo do?” Ji Xun said with a smile. “But, give a senior a chance to take care of a junior.”
“…”
For the rest of the journey, Ji Xun walked in front, and Huo Ranyin walked behind. The branch was like a link, connecting the two of them.
The rain and mist were hazy. In the dim light of the flashlight, Huo Ranyin held the branch and looked at the back in front of him.
His steps gradually became lighter, and a thought vaguely flashed through his mind:
Wushan is so big. Maybe we’ll be searching for a long time?
But before long, fate arrived.
On the walkie-talkie, Wen Yangyang’s excited voice shouted:
“Captain Huo, Teacher Ji, I found traces of burning on a gravel path on the mountain! Forensic Examiner Hu is with me. She also found residual human bone fragments here!”
After coming down from the mountain, Mo Nai hid under an overpass—not exactly under an overpass. It was a shabby hotel near an overpass. It was called a hotel, but they didn’t check IDs. It cost 100 yuan a month for a bunk bed. A room had ten beds, housing twenty people. Sometimes couples would squeeze onto one bed, and strange sounds could be heard in the middle of the night.
The room had no air conditioning, no electric fan, and no heating.
When it was unbearably cold, someone would find some charcoal and burn it for warmth.
Naturally, in the dead of winter, the windows couldn’t be closed. If they were closed, the room would be too stuffy, and there would be carbon monoxide poisoning.
Mo Nai’s bed was near the window. It was the coldest spot, and no one liked to stay there, so it was given to him.
He huddled in a black down coat. This was Gao Shuang’s husband’s coat. It actually had bloodstains on it, but on a black down coat, the bloodstains were not obvious. He wiped it casually and wore it.
Behind him, there were occasional loud shouts, moans, people walking back and forth, and nonsensical talk.
Everyone living here was listless, their expressions dazed—the after-effects of drug use.
A drug den.
It was actually somewhat laughable. The society cracked down on drugs so hard, but as long as you found the right place, you could still see a large number of drug addicts. In this shabby room, they were like the city’s gophers, a nation unto themselves.
As for their trading location, it was also very simple.
It was right under the overpass outside the window he was looking at. One hand with money, the other with goods. Very simple.
His blank eyes suddenly moved.
He saw his friend, and another person wearing a fisherman’s hat. Although he deliberately wore a low-key black outfit, one could still tell that his clothes were neat and clean, out of place here. They appeared in front of the window.
A person needs friends.
This friend was a good person and efficient. After Mo Nai finished everything on the mountain, he used the set of phone and ID card given by Gao Shuang to contact his friend. His friend brought him here—
This was a good place.
Except for the shabby conditions, no one cared what you had done or what you were about to do.
Everyone here only cared about where their next fix was.
Mo Nai didn’t do drugs, so he was a bit idle.
He strained to listen for a while, but the conversation between the two people outside the window was very low. He struggled for a long time and could only make out one or two words.
“…kill… Wei Zhenzhu…”
