The distance between the two standing men was less than half a foot. Even though the sky was dark, this distance was enough for them to see each other clearly.
Xie Lin was currently squatting, so he didn’t have a full view of Chi Qing’s face. From his angle, he could only see the pale, slender half of a wrist protruding from the sweater. Further up was the familiar black glove. Because the newcomer was holding an umbrella, it perfectly obscured the top half of his face, leaving only his chin and a smear of bright red lips visible.
Bought a knife. Doesn’t like cats. Has a knife cut on his finger pad.
If these elements could only be considered “suspicious,” then adding the ironclad proof of showing up at the primary crime scene with an umbrella at this sensitive time meant this Mr. Chi was likely more than just a mere suspect.
Tap.
Rainwater that had pooled along the eaves dripped down, striking heavily against the umbrella.
Xie Lin had considered that there was a certain probability the killer might strike again on a rainy day, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite this coincidental. He slowly released the serrated knife the killer had left at the scene, breaking the silence first: “We meet again.”
Even in this kind of situation, he didn’t seem nervous at all. He even still had a smile when he spoke, though those eyes that usually held a smile now contained only a chilling coldness. “Running into each other so many times in one day—and you’re still saying it’s not fate?”
Chi Qing’s gaze rested on the knife Xie Lin had just put down.
The knife was stained with blood.
Because it was needed to slice through flesh and muscle, and possibly even scraped against bone, the blade had very obvious signs of wear and tear.
Serrations are different from ordinary smooth blades. The jagged teeth were jagged and intersecting, and there were even bits of minced meat accidentally wedged into them when slicing through the flesh. Due to the filthy surrounding environment, those bits of minced meat wedged between the teeth had long since turned into dull, black “grime.”
The image of the exact same knife sitting on Xie Lin’s passenger seat during the day flashed before Chi Qing’s eyes.
—”I live near Haimao. Would you say it’s on the way?”
Chi Qing blinked extremely slowly. He raised the previously lowered umbrella, revealing the other half of his face, and this time, he didn’t deny it: “It is quite fateful.”
As soon as Chi Qing’s voice fell, Xie Lin made the first move—he raised a hand and loosened the tie around his neck slightly.
Xie Lin tried to get him to surrender without a fight, abandoning pointless resistance: “If you behave, I’ll try to be as gentle as possible… lest your pale skin ends up covered in bruises.”
However, to Chi Qing’s ears, these words sounded like a threat.
It was common for a suspect caught red-handed at a crime scene to want to silence the witness—although it usually wouldn’t warrant such a huge commotion just for a few cat corpses.
But the other party was sick in the head, so it was hard to say.
The area around the factory was sparsely populated. This was an abandoned place to begin with, located near the back gate of the Haimao Residential Compound. Even during the day, very few people came and went here, let alone late at night while it was raining.
Ordinary people might be afraid, but in all the years Chi Qing had grown up, he had never known what fear felt like.
What he didn’t know was that this exact indifference toward the crime scene made him look even more suspicious at this moment.
Chi Qing retorted: “You should worry about yourself.”
“Since we couldn’t come to an agreement,” while talking, Xie Lin had already walked to the door, closing the distance at an extremely fast speed as he spoke the second half of the sentence, “then don’t blame me for not holding back.”
The instant Xie Lin made his move, Chi Qing took a step back.
Right as the two were almost plastered together, Chi Qing’s finger, which had been resting on the umbrella handle, slid up a few inches to find the closing switch. The transparent long-handled umbrella abruptly snapped shut. He reversed the direction of the umbrella tip, thrusting the sharp point straight forward!
Xie Lin tilted his head and used his elbow to block, forcing a change in the umbrella’s trajectory to dodge the tip coming at him through the rain.
Even so, Chi Qing still managed to carve a scratch into the side of Xie Lin’s neck.
“Quite smart,” Xie Lin said, gripping the umbrella with one hand while using his thumb pad to wipe the slender scratch. “Even know how to use an umbrella.”
The man’s collar was open, and the shirt he was wearing was gradually getting soaked by the rain. His appearance often gave off an innate sense of ambiguity, and the mark left by the umbrella tip looked just like a cat scratch.
Chi Qing didn’t speak. He gripped the umbrella, its tip still pointing straight at him like a silver needle.
Ji Mingrui had absolutely no idea what his good bro was currently experiencing.
After finishing the report he needed to submit, he finally massaged his cervical spine and looked up at his phone.
After reading the unread messages on his phone, he suffered his second critical hit of the day: “…”
– Thank you guys.
– It’s precisely because of people like you in this world that I suspect every day whether my existence drags down the average IQ of humanity.
– But I have a question.
– How exactly did you arrive at the same conclusion as him?
Although after Xie Lin had finished saying all that stuff he just left, and they had originally intended to follow him, Brother Bin had only told them: “You guys don’t need to go. Hand in the reports due today first. He’ll be fine on his own.”
In the presence of a genius, they really were too redundant.
Ji Mingrui could almost imagine Chi Qing and Xie Lin simultaneously deducing the exact same thing.
He sighed in lamentation, and finally sent back a message:
– If there’s a chance, I really should introduce you two. You guys would probably have a lot of common language.
However, the two people with “a lot of common language” were currently still fighting. Chi Qing’s phone had long since dropped during the scuffle; the phone landed in the grass, intimately connecting with the mud, and after sliding a distance, it completely died.
At first, Xie Lin was wary of the umbrella in his hand and slowed his pace. That umbrella was a double-edged sword; while it could be thrust at him, it could also easily and accidentally injure the user.
So, while fighting, Xie Lin still had to remind the person he was brawling with: “Be careful.”
That person clearly did not want to converse with him.
The body of the umbrella swung a clean, sharp arc through the air. Before the afterimage even vanished, it swung straight toward his exposed weak point—
Xie Lin didn’t dodge.
Chi Qing’s goal wasn’t actually to stab him, but just to use the opportunity to widen the distance between them.
But Xie Lin taking the hit directly allowed him to seize the initiative instead. He clamped down hard on the umbrella: “I said be careful. Put the umbrella down.”
“…”
Chi Qing was actually very bad at close-quarters combat because of his germaphobia.
Xie Lin quickly realized this trait of his, and seizing the right moment, pinned him directly to the ground.
This was the second time he touched those hands wearing black gloves. Because of the rain, both of them were soaked to the bone. The overgrown bangs on Chi Qing’s forehead were completely drenched with rainwater, and those ink-black eyes were much darker than the surrounding night.
Xie Lin pinned him beneath him, holding him down with one hand while using the other to untie the already loose shirt tie around his neck, yanking it off with a swift pull.
Chi Qing faintly sensed something was wrong: “What are you doing.”
Xie Lin pulled off the tie and went to bind Chi Qing’s hands: “Afraid you won’t behave.”
That tie, which clearly looked expensive, was used by him as a rope. The silver-gray tie was wrapped around Chi Qing’s wrists several times. Xie Lin hadn’t expected Chi Qing’s wrists to be so thin; after wrapping it several times, there was still a very long section left.
Then, Chi Qing watched helplessly as the psychopath wrapped the remaining half around his own wrist, tying their hands together and finishing it off with a sturdy dead knot: “…”
He was dead set on not letting him escape.
“Get up,” Xie Lin said.
Xie Lin held him down and forced him into the car through the same door. He started the engine, and before the car moved, the windshield wipers first swept away the accumulated rainwater on the glass.
Chi Qing deeply felt that this guy was genuinely sick in the head. Even just getting in the car took an eternity of effort: “Where are we going?”
Xie Lin asked back: “Don’t you know in your heart where we’re going?”
Chi Qing: “…”
Anyone who tortures and kills animals has a certain potential for committing crimes.
Chi Qing stared at the windshield wipers, looking through the window, trying to run a search for where he might be taken.
……
Driving five kilometers further ahead was the distant suburbs.
Within three kilometers, there was a mountain. Both of these places were easy to strike and easy to hide a body.
It was also possible this psychopath would take him back to his own home. Home is the most familiar place to a person, and the place that makes one feel the safest. Many killers choose to commit their first crime within their psychological safety zone.
The car slowly drove out.
Chi Qing lowered his eyes and began silently calculating the route in his head.
If the car is heading to the distant suburbs, how many traffic lights will it pass? How many service stations?
Roads easily get congested on rainy days. If he utilized the time stuck in traffic waiting at a red light, escaping wasn’t entirely impossible.
Xie Lin had absolutely no idea what Chi Qing was thinking. If he did, he might want to crack this person’s head open to see what exactly was inside.
The car drove on the road for about ten minutes.
The traffic conditions were almost exactly as Chi Qing had anticipated. The car hadn’t even gotten off the highway when the speed of traffic on this road leading to the distant suburbs visibly slowed down. Soon, it drove onto the road where he had been stuck in a long traffic jam the last time he went to the police station.
If he wanted to get away, this was undoubtedly the best opportunity.
Three minutes later, a black Maybach hadn’t been off the overpass for long—when the car body suddenly violently swerved left and right. The amplitude wasn’t large, but it was enough to attract the attention of the driver in the adjacent lane. After all, the two cars caught each other off guard and almost scraped against each other.
This sudden movement gave the driver in the adjacent lane such a fright that he almost slammed on his brakes.
“Damn it,” the driver, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, cursed continuously as he looked out the window. “Do you know how to drive or not—”
With this look, he saw the car in the adjacent lane. The two people inside the car were leaning extremely close to each other.
At first, he thought it was some sort of inappropriate-for-children scene and was just about to continue cursing about how crazy young people are nowadays. However, when he fixed his eyes and looked closer, he discovered that the man in the black sweater sitting in the passenger seat had suddenly sprung up from his seat. Gripping the roof handle with one hand, his entire body was almost suspended in mid-air using the leverage—like he was filming an action movie.
“…” The cigarette in the driver’s mouth almost fell onto his lap from the shock of this scene.
What kind of game is this.
Fast and Furious?
Not only did the driver in the adjacent lane not expect it, but Xie Lin also hadn’t expected Chi Qing to suddenly lunge over at this moment to grab the steering wheel. When he failed to grab the steering wheel, he directly tried to use his leverage to kick him. If the car doors hadn’t been locked, he had no doubt Chi Qing would have kicked him right out of the car.
He steadied the steering wheel, barely dodging a car in the left lane, and used his other hand—the one tied to Chi Qing—to strenuously push the person back down: “Are you crazy—?!”
Chi Qing: “Let me out.”
“I’ll say it one more time,” Chi Qing said coldly. “Let me out of the car.”
During the time the two struggled inside the car, the car had already continued driving for over a kilometer.
Another kilometer ahead was the police station.
Xie Lin directly sped up. The closer they got to the destination, the more Chi Qing realized the route was different from his prediction.
The car slammed on the brakes, stopping abruptly at the entrance of the police station.
Xie Lin: “Get out.”
Sitting in the car, Chi Qing looked at the giant words “Public Security” at the entrance of the Yongan Police Station, and his train of thought instantly snapped: “…?”
