Ji Mingrui was shaken over and over again by the words “Criminal Investigation Unit.”
It went without saying what those four words meant.
Although Ji Mingrui was currently just a newly minted local beat cop, grinding his way up the ladder of catching criminals like leveling up in a game, becoming a criminal detective had always been his ultimate goal. Even so, he hardly dared to dream of squeezing his way into the General Unit.
Like a properly qualified fanboy, the male cop rattled off his idol’s track record like recounting precious family heirlooms: “He participated in the South China City 7.19 Family Annihilation Case, the 9.02 Serial Murder Case, the 3.10 Poisoning Case…”
These case names and dates were thunderous to the ears.
Every single one was a sensational, highly malignant case that had once shocked the entire province.
Listening to all this, Ji Mingrui snapped out of his “that’s so freaking badass” awe and noticed a common thread among these cases: “Wait a minute, these cases are from at least ten years ago.”
The ones he mentioned were all old cases from over a decade prior.
Ji Mingrui glanced at Jie Lin’s back. The man was still turning over that mass of mangled flesh and blood that Su Xiaolan didn’t even dare to touch. His movements were actually very gentle, as if afraid of disturbing them. His blood-stained fingers stroked the flesh, tracing down the knife wounds bit by bit. Because the crime scene was too gory, no matter how you looked at it, the action was enough to make one’s hair stand on end.
Ji Mingrui said with a dazed look in his eyes, “To think he looks so young, but is actually already that old.”
Su Xiaolan also nodded: “Yeah, I thought he was only around 25.”
The male cop: “?”
Are these two idiots?
The male cop looked at them as if looking at two fools.
“He really isn’t that old.”
The male cop seemed to feel this sentence wasn’t intuitive enough, so he added another: “He is the younger brother of the former Captain of the Criminal Investigation Unit, Jie Feng. The first time he assisted in a case, he was still in his first year of high school.”
Su Xiaolan doubted whether she had misheard.
Ji Mingrui thought back to his freshman year of high school, when he was still secretly wearing height-boosting insoles just to run for the class sports committee representative: “…?!”
Could the disparity between members of the same species actually reach this level?
Ji Mingrui: “I have a question, though. I get that he’s super badass, but a consultant is a consultant. Why is there an ‘ex-‘ in front of it?”
“Xiao Jiang, come here—”
The male cop was just about to open his mouth when Wu Zhibin waved at him and called him over.
Jiang Yu packed away his excitement, grabbed his notebook, and trotted over: “Brother Bin.”
Wu Zhibin put a lot of effort into leading this batch of rookies, giving them opportunities to speak up one by one: “You tell me, what did you notice?”
Jiang Yu tried hard to focus his gaze on the crime scene, but it was really difficult to do.
Wu Zhibin shifted the angle of his cane and suddenly whacked him on the calf: “I told you to look at the scene! What are you staring at other people for!”
Jiang Yu: “…Sorry, Brother Bin.”
Jiang Yu took one last look at Jie Lin.
Looking past the man’s slightly bent knuckles, he seemed to see a scene from many years ago: a teenager, barely over ten years old, sitting at the head of the long conference table, lightly tapping his fingers against the surface.
The reason Jiang Yu knew this information like the back of his hand was because his father had worked at the General Bureau for many years. When he was very young, he made it a habit to go to the bureau every Friday after school, find an empty spot to do his homework, and wait for his dad to get off work.
The people at the General Bureau were always busy, always running around, and rarely ever at home.
When he was young, after finishing his homework, he would often secretly peek through the glass doors of the conference room to see what his father looked like when working. Even though most of the time he didn’t need to look to know that his father would definitely be staring at the crime scene photos on the screen with tightly furrowed brows.
At that time, the Captain of the Criminal Investigation Unit, Jie Feng, was the brightest star in the bureau. He treated people with warmth and courtesy. Having reached the position of Unit Captain at a young age, he was an outstanding youth representative, with a resume and reputation as pristine as a textbook.
But compared to his halo, what left the deepest impression on Jiang Yu was his younger brother.
That year, the “South China City 7.19 Family Annihilation Case” shocked the whole city. The killer left no clues, the media reported extensively, and the pressure to solve the case grew by the day. Looking through the glass window, the boy saw that his father’s deeply furrowed brows hadn’t relaxed for several days straight.
Until the tenth day after the crime—someone provided a breakthrough.
His father hadn’t been home for ten days. Peeking from outside the conference room, he saw his father pull open the door and rush out of the room with several detectives.
When they came back, they brought someone with them.
A teenager in a school uniform walked at the very end of the group. He had probably just gotten out of school. The blue-gray uniform hung loosely on his frame, and he had the kind of face that would frequently receive love letters at school.
After he went in, the seating arrangement in the conference room changed.
The teenager was invited to sit at the head of the table.
The long conference table had over a dozen seats. He sat in the furthest seat, which happened to directly face the projection screen that hadn’t been turned off yet.
The crime scene photos of the family annihilation case were displayed one by one on the screen, the fluorescent light of the slideshow constantly flickering and shifting across the room.
Through the gaps in the blinds, Jiang Yu saw the teenager’s fingers interlaced, resting on the table. The two rows of detectives sitting beside him were all wearing crisp, solemn uniforms with silver badges on their shoulders. His high school uniform looked completely out of place in that conference room.
Later, he learned that this teenager was named Jie Lin.
He was the younger brother of the Unit Captain.
—”I get that he’s a consultant, but why is there an ‘ex-‘ in front of it?”
The scene of the last time he saw the teenager flashed through Jiang Yu’s mind.
His father had been uncharacteristically agitated: “I disagree—he’s too dangerous! Have you read his psychological evaluation report? Yes, I don’t know what happened during the kidnapping case. All I know is that we used to have Jie Feng, but now Jie Feng is gone. There’s no one to keep him in check. If you recruit him, can you control him? Who can control him?!”
Jie Lin didn’t know that there was an “old acquaintance” at the scene. At this moment, all his attention was drawn to a thin piece of paper stuck to the paw of that silver-white Highland cat.
He peeled off that half-piece of thin paper and looked closely, realizing it was a white-background, red-bordered price tag sticker from a convenience store. It was wrinkled beyond recognition, and after being soaked in blood, only the radical character for “person” (人) could vaguely be seen.
“Can a fifteen-year-old really solve cases?”
“Do these kinds of people actually exist, aside from the Detective Conan anime? I still can’t believe it.”
After getting off work, Ji Mingrui drove directly to Chi Qing’s house. The main reason he went to “Grandpa Chi’s” place was because it was on the way. Chi Qing’s home was less than two kilometers from Haimao Residential Compound. As soon as he walked in, he collapsed onto the sofa, doubting his life choices as he lay there.
Ji Mingrui flipped himself over on the sofa, sprawling out in a star shape.
Ji Mingrui continued to lament: “It’s too absurd. What was I doing when I was fifteen!”
Chi Qing: “Buying height-boosting insoles and begging me to let you copy my homework.”
Ji Mingrui: “…”
Chi Qing continued: “Chasing after a girl in the class next door. When you failed, you cried for a solid half-hour and even tried to wipe your tears on my clothes, so right after you finally finished crying, I beat you until you cried again.”
Ji Mingrui: “………”
Chi Qing: “Do you want me to keep helping you reminisce?”
Ji Mingrui sobered up instantly: “No need, thanks.”
While Chi Qing was speaking, he was slicing bread. The open kitchen was cold and devoid of any homely warmth. He didn’t have many pots and pans in his house, but he sure had a lot of knives.
Ji Mingrui noticed the lighting in the room was poor and got up to turn on the light. “What kind of nocturnal animal are you? Aren’t you afraid of cutting your hand in pitch darkness?”
The originally dim room instantly brightened.
Startled by the sudden light, Chi Qing’s hand, which was using a small knife to cut the bread, paused.
The silver-gleaming blade slipped, stabbing straight into the pad of his finger.
Chi Qing: “…Are you tired of living today?”
Ji Mingrui apologized while looking for the first aid kit: “My bad.”
However, before he could find the first-aid kit, he saw that Chi Qing had no reaction whatsoever to the blood welling up from his fingertip. He just calmly brought his finger to his lips, and the blood instantly vanished into his mouth.
Ji Mingrui wanted to say, “You really are a vampire reincarnated,” but his gaze was inadvertently drawn to the knife in Chi Qing’s hand.
It was a serrated knife. The tip was slender, the blade curved, and the serrations looked like a row of sharp canine teeth, glinting with a cold, sharp light.
—”The cross-section of the wound wasn’t clean; there were signs of back-and-forth tearing.”
—”It should be a small serrated knife.”
Chi Qing: “What are you looking at?”
Ji Mingrui stared blankly at the knife in Chi Qing’s hand: “When did you buy this knife? Where did you buy it? Can I take a look?”
Chi Qing didn’t ask why. He flipped the knife so the tip faced himself, and handed the handle over.
It was precisely because of this action that Chi Qing realized there was a price tag still stuck to the handle that he hadn’t peeled off yet. He casually peeled off the tag and said, “About last week, by the roadside.”
Chi Qing’s neighborhood wasn’t far from Haimao; many large facilities were shared by the area. Ji Mingrui took the knife and examined it over and over: “Do you remember which store?”
Chi Qing: “Bianmin Grocery.”
Ji Mingrui opened his mouth and the flattery flowed out effortlessly: “Sometimes I really admire your extraordinary memory…”
Chi Qing stuck the tag he had just peeled off onto the back of Ji Mingrui’s hand. Ji Mingrui looked down and saw the name of the grocery store, “Bianmin,” printed on the white background with a red border: “…”
Ding-ling—
The bell on the door of an ordinary grocery store, located a little over five hundred meters away from Haimao, rang out.
Jie Lin scanned the shop. It was cramped, with an old, dated layout from the inside out. The furnishings still looked like they did over a decade ago. Even the outdated habit of sticking price tags on merchandise had been carried over to the present.
Within a two-kilometer radius, this was the only grocery store that still put sticker tags on its goods.
Right inside the entrance was the snack area; the potato chip bags had price tags on them: ¥6.
The rectangular labels bore the name of this convenience store printed in blue lettering.
The kitchenware section was further inside. Jie Lin grabbed a few bags of snacks and walked in. Inside was a dazzling array of pots, bowls, ladles, and basins.
The second shelf held several types of fruit knives.
Because serrated knives had fewer uses and didn’t sell as well as smooth-bladed fruit knives, they were placed at the very back. There were four left.
The store owner wasn’t around. At the front counter, there was only a little boy leaning over his homework. He seemed very used to helping his parents watch the shop. Seeing someone ready to check out, he put down his pen and expertly started calculating the total.
A hand tapped on his workbook: “Little friend, you chose the wrong answer for question three.”
The little boy looked up at the newcomer.
Jie Lin picked up a pencil lying nearby and wrote down a very simple formula string on a piece of scratch paper. After finishing, he asked, “Could you tell big brother if anyone came to buy this type of knife recently?”
The boy held the snacks, glanced at the serrated knife waiting to be checked out, thought for a moment, and said, “Yes.”
“A very pretty older brother wearing gloves.”
__
Author’s Note:
Chi Qing: ?
Congratulations on acquiring a new suspect.
