The man was pinned down, but his phone was not. In the instant he was thrown to the ground, he hurled the phone, which he had been gripping tightly, forward and tossed it straight into the storm drain!
“Damn it, you little bastard!” The deputy captain who came up behind them immediately remembered the nightmare of retrieving something from a cesspit and swore loudly. “Do you people have some kind of problem? You love throwing things into storm drains and cesspits, don’t you? Since you don’t have to fish them out yourselves, tossing things in feels as satisfying as hitting the bullseye, right? You should be the ones going down there, stirring through the muck, smelling the drainage ditch for real!”
He shouted so loudly that the onlookers could hear him clearly, and the crowd burst out laughing.
“Exactly, whoever threw it should retrieve it. Let him go down and fish it out first.”
There was no way he was going down there. Police work still had rules. But the public was speaking up for them, and the deputy captain was very pleased. He even waved around at the crowd, suddenly looking quite imposing as if he had become the boss of the grassroots level.
The onlookers were reluctant to leave. Scenes like police arresting a fugitive — something that usually only appeared in movies and TV dramas — had actually happened right in front of them in real life.
People heading home to cook were no longer in a hurry. Those waiting to pick up their children stayed put. Those just off work didn’t feel tired anymore. They all stood at a distance, craning their necks, both cautious and curious.
“Did you see that? The police fired a gun!”
“The sound wasn’t as exaggerated as in TV shows.”
“How vicious does the person being chased have to be for the police to actually fire?”
Actually, he wasn’t that vicious… or rather, exactly how vicious he was would still have to be determined after further interrogation.
As Zhao Wu quickly put the silver handcuffs on the man, he was secretly shocked by the shot Huo Ranyin had fired. He also felt a trace of lingering fear, and another trace of admiration.
No matter what else, the timing of the shot, the angle, and the decisiveness behind it were all extraordinary.
Full of admiration, he turned around to look at Huo Ranyin, only to see Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin leaning close together again. Ji Xun was being exceptionally intimate, his gaze on Huo Ranyin’s eyes looking almost electrified, sending a jolt through Zhao Wu.
Then he heard Ji Xun say, “Captain, your shot hit me right in the heart. So accurate, so handsome.”
That final syllable, with its rising tail, made Zhao Wu feel even more numb.
After the numbness passed, he had a physiological reaction:
Ugh…
What heart? What “my” captain? Good grief, I misjudged you — this expert is just a bootlicker!
Just as he finished thinking that, Huo Ranyin actually replied.
“You’re handsome too.”
“Where am I handsome?”
“Your face,” Huo Ranyin said. And at the end, he even curled the corner of his mouth, looking as if he had been very pleasantly flattered.
“…”
Zhao Wu’s brain, half numb, turned back around.
“What are you standing there thinking about? We’ve already caught the person. It’s time to wrap up and take him back to the bureau for a rapid interrogation,” the deputy captain said as he walked over from the front and waved a hand in front of Zhao Wu’s face.
“Lao Mai.” Zhao Wu called him by surname. “Look at me — am I handsome? Did that tackle just now, that heroic pounce, fall into your heart?”
“…”
The deputy captain looked at Zhao Wu, his face clearly saying only one thing:
So disgusting…
The group withdrew and returned to the police bureau.
The basic information of the man who had come instead of Luo Sui to collect the parcel — the one who had been shouted at by police and then bolted into a run before ending up in the interrogation chair — also reached everyone’s desks.
His name was Li Ke, male, born in 1990, twenty-six years old, middle-school education, originally from the northwest. He had been making a living in Qin City for more than ten years, coming here to struggle before he was even an adult.
The world was unfair. With the same middle-school education, some people managed to build themselves up in just a couple of years, living in mansions and driving luxury cars. As for most people, the harder they struggled, the more they seemed to circle around inside a little world made entirely of transparent walls. No matter how big the city was, there wasn’t a single patch of land for them, and no matter how many good houses there were, there wasn’t a single window for them.
Li Ke had changed jobs many times. His social security records showed work as a construction laborer, a bathhouse doorman, a delivery rider, a courier, and he was currently working as a waiter at a hotpot restaurant. This last job was relatively stable; he had been doing it for three years.
“Has his address been found?” Zhao Wu asked the person checking the records.
“There’s no record in the rental network,” the record checker said, shaking his head. “Maybe he never registered. We checked this number against courier records too — he likes to use Cainiao parcel lockers for shipments and never writes a specific street address.”
Zhao Wu cursed under his breath.
That was understandable. Since this Li Ke arrived at the police bureau, no matter what the police said or asked, he had remained completely silent, clearly protecting Luo Sui behind him.
And Luo Sui had gone through such a huge detour just to retrieve a parcel she considered important, which showed she was already like a frightened bird. If they wasted too much time on Li Ke, Luo Sui would certainly escape again…
“What about the phone?” Zhao Wu asked again. “Can the carrier check the movement trail?”
“Same as the parcel — only a rough range,” everyone sighed.
“Tell the tech department to hurry up and get the phone powered on for me. There must be some important clue in there.” Zhao Wu shouted and waved his subordinates off to the confirmed search area to stake out possible leads, while continuing to think of other solutions.
The detectives all got busy with their own tasks, while Ji Xun picked a good spot and sat outside the one-way glass, staring at Li Ke.
“What are you looking at?” Huo Ranyin asked.
“Looking at how this young man’s actually pretty handsome,” Ji Xun said.
“…”
“Not kidding,” Ji Xun smiled. “I’m just thinking about how Li Ke and Luo Sui got to know each other. Their class, education, and living circles are all quite different. The odds of Luo Sui knowing him are actually pretty low.”
“The internet,” Huo Ranyin said, spitting out two words.
“Hmm, true. The internet connects everyone who doesn’t know each other…” Ji Xun said. “But with his financial situation, could he really be sending gifts to Luo Sui from time to time and inviting her on trips now and then?”
“Did saying it mean doing it?” Huo Ranyin asked in return. “Luo Sui’s colleagues and manager both said she worked hard. In other words, she rarely took leave. So no matter how many times K talked about traveling, he didn’t actually have to pay for ‘travel.’ And besides, do you think a waiter’s salary is low?”
“If you put it that way, then a waiter doesn’t have much future, but the salary isn’t actually low…”
“Exactly. A waiter’s salary isn’t low; so is moving bricks or doing deliveries. It’s just that compared with office jobs, those roles are more tiring and don’t sound as respectable. But the internet can hide the less respectable side of a person and emphasize the respectable side. That doesn’t take much effort.”
“…And this guy really is pretty handsome,” Ji Xun murmured. “At least in terms of looks, he’s very presentable. Young, good-looking, and probably able to attract women. Was Luo Sui deeply in love with him, and then used that to seduce and kill Old Hu in order to seize his property?”
He looked through the one-way glass.
After being brought into the police bureau, Li Ke had taken off his baseball cap and mask, fully exposing the face he’d been hiding.
It was a face that looked rather mixed-race.
He had slightly fluffy curly hair, high brow bones, sharp eyebrows, deep-set eyes, and a high, straight nose bridge. Below that was a pair of lips with well-proportioned shape.
If this proper-looking face were willing to smile, it would probably be very likable. But now, with his eyes fixed motionlessly on the table, his mouth turned down, and his face stiff, there was no vitality in him at all.
He looked like nothing more than a gray-black sticker, ugly and lifeless, pasted inside the interrogation room and making people not want to look at him a second time.
What the tech team recovered first from the phone was the relatively intact separate SD card. Li Ke’s phone was a cheap model with limited storage, and this SD card had been bought separately.
The SD card was mostly full of photos. The owner seemed quite nostalgic — even photos from seven or eight years ago were carefully organized and preserved.
The police did not browse those photos one by one for now. Their attention was drawn to four photos Li Ke had taken just last night.
The photos were taken of a computer screen.
The first photo showed a TXT document titled Water Transport Kidnapping Plan.
The second was a screenshot of what looked like a darknet human-trafficking posting board. It featured the ID photo of a girl listed as merchandise. She still looked very young, like a university student, and Luo Sui’s features could be vaguely seen.
Below it were some messages expressing intent to buy her.
Of course that girl was Luo Sui — the third photo was a post from Luo Sui’s Renren page, and the ID photo in the second image had been cut from there.
The fourth photo was a private message exchange between seller and buyer.
Deputy Captain Mai had a good memory. Pointing at the private messages, he said, “I remember that kid Lu Song once played around on the darknet and wanted to kidnap someone. Damn, could this be his Plan B? A beginner, still wanting to confirm the deal on the spot.”
He paused, then pieced the information together into a story: “Lu Song found someone on the darknet to kidnap. Li Ke browsed the darknet and realized that the target was actually his own friend, and that someone had already bought her. So to save her, he made up a plan document to fool Lu Song and figure out where the transaction would happen — this private message is clearly just fishing for information.”
Zhao Wu felt something was off. One key person was missing from the whole matter.
“What about Hu Zheng? Didn’t you say Hu Zheng was the first anonymous person to say he wanted to buy her on the darknet? There are too many coincidences in this world — a post about selling Luo Sui, and the first two people leaving comments are both connected to her?”
A technician beside them said quietly, “There are a lot of scammer-ridden darknet listings now. The first anonymous person is most likely just someone who cheated money but never intended to kidnap anyone. Hu Zheng probably just happened to be there.”
“…”
Zhao Wu, who had accidentally overcomplicated the matter, coughed. “Still, that’s too much of a coincidence. First a scammer, then a teammate of the other side, then Hu Zheng suddenly wanting to do a kidnapping.”
Ji Xun interjected, “These pictures were all taken by Li Ke. We still haven’t asked why he photographed the computer screen in the first place.”
“I’d ask too, if the other side weren’t resisting with silence the whole time,” Zhao Wu said, thinking of Lu Song and Li Ke with irritation. “One doesn’t tell the truth at all, the other simply doesn’t speak. Vicious and sly! I want to put them in protective suits, let them stay in a cesspit for three days and nights, then fish them out and question them!”
Deputy Captain Mai nodded deeply in agreement.
Since Ji Xun couldn’t fully relate, he quickly pointed at the computer to give Zhao Wu some good news. “Captain Zhao, the phone system has been restored.”
The phone’s Weibo app was a major focus for everyone, because Hu Zheng’s wife had specifically said Luo Sui had been getting all lovey-dovey with someone there. Li Ke’s Weibo did not disappoint — or rather, it was eye-opening.
He had fifteen accounts logged in.
“…Is he also doing side work as a troll farm?” Zhao Wu asked.
Among those accounts, the names were all over the place, and all of them followed Melancholy Blue-Court — one account named _K_ent interacted with Blue-Court most frequently, liking every one of her posts and commenting often, which made it unsurprising that Hu Zheng’s wife noticed it.
Several of the other accounts had plenty of comments too, and some even commented on themselves.
But besides _K_ent_ and another account called Diligently Working Hard, most of them never posted anything on their own pages.
Diligently Working Hard was probably Li Ke’s most frequently used account. It didn’t interact much with Blue-Court, though Blue-Court looked like its latest follow. But this account was strange too.
It had been sending messages every day, without fail, to an account whose Weibo name had been wiped into random characters, whose avatar was a lily in water — and it had done this for more than three years.
Most of the messages were:
Good morning
Good night
Happy New Year / Spring Festival / Women’s Day / Youth Day / Labor Day / Mid-Autumn Festival… and all kinds of messy holidays.
Lanlan, don’t be unhappy.
Lanlan, how are you? I miss you so much.
I know you’re somewhere in the world. It’s fine if you don’t reply to me. As long as you’re doing well, that’s enough.
I really, really want to see you.
Deputy Captain Mai was creeped out by the private messages and shuddered. When everyone turned to look at him, he added defensively, “I heard the English name for blue is BLUE. Also means ‘blue.’”
“That means,” Ji Xun mused, “this account may be one Luo Sui used in the past, but has now abandoned.”
Huo Ranyin, who hadn’t spoken much, added, “Luo Sui’s house had an empty flowerpot, and at Old Hu’s house, Granny Mei said that because Luo Sui hated lily-of-the-valley, she had moved it to the corner. One of those two lily-of-the-valley plants had fresh trimming marks on its stems. Lily-of-the-valley is highly poisonous in all parts. If it had some special meaning for Luo Sui, then she should also know it isn’t obscure knowledge. If you soak lily-of-the-valley leaves in water, the water also becomes toxic. Serving a cup of that poison to an unsuspecting Hu Kun would be the simplest way to kill him. After the toxin took effect, Hu Kun hit his head on the coffee table leg, causing impact injuries — and glass shards embedded in the skin. Although Hu Kun’s body has already been cremated, I think your forensic team can check whether the floor was contaminated by lily-of-the-valley poison.”
This undoubtedly pointed the forensic team toward a very strong line of suspicion, and Zhao Wu immediately issued the order.
“Lily-of-the-valley is also called the tears of the Holy Mother,” Ji Xun sighed. “If Old Hu’s blue tears were drunk this way, that would be unbearably sad…”
