In the office, many of the Qin City investigators turned their bright, focused eyes toward the Weibo clues projected on the big screen. But no matter how they looked at it — from the first screenshot to the last — their eyes eventually went blurry, and they still couldn’t spot what was wrong.
So everyone silently looked toward Zhao Wu.
Zhao Wu coughed. “Please just get to the point, Specialist Ji.”
“Hm. Deputy Captain, remember when you were searching Luo Sui’s home and asked what I and Team Leader Huo were discussing there?”
“Of course. You two were so in sync — one asked whether there was anything, the other answered there wasn’t. As for what there was or wasn’t, you never said a word, so I was left standing there in the dark.” The deputy captain was still a bit resentful. “But I remember your answer. You said you didn’t find a family photo in Luo Sui’s room.”
“That’s right. The issue raised by the absence of a family photo — let our sharp-eyed captain explain it,” Ji Xun said, tossing the ball to Huo Ranyin.
Huo Ranyin didn’t even lift his eyes. “Why are you calling me? Finish it yourself.”
“I’m thirsty,” Ji Xun said confidently. “And I’m tired from standing.”
The people from Qin City collectively felt a little toothache at that.
“…” Huo Ranyin gave the spoiled one a speechless look, then stood up and switched places with Ji Xun, stepping up to the projector. His way of speaking was different from Ji Xun’s.
Ji Xun liked telling a case as a story, but for Huo Ranyin, a case was just a case.
Solving a case should start from the evidence. No storytelling, no mystification.
“Roommate.” Huo Ranyin circled this key word first.
Then he was about to project the Weibo posts that corresponded to it, but before he moved, Ji Xun had already done it for him. The one who had just claimed to be tired now seemed to have shaken off all fatigue and cheerfully operated the computer as Huo Ranyin’s assistant.
The projector displayed the Weibo posts containing that keyword in sequence.
Sep 08, 2012
【Your weird Africa-time schedule has almost become my roommate’s fixed joke about me…】
Sep 13, 2010
【…speechless. Really, relying on heaven and earth is not as good as relying on a roommate】
“Luo Sui had a roommate. They got along very well, and this roommate had been living with her since 2010,” Huo Ranyin summarized. “When we searched Luo Sui’s home earlier, there were nails in the wall but no family photo. At the time, Team Zhao said that was because of old resentment toward her parents — but resentment doesn’t explain why Luo Sui, with a south-facing master bedroom and secondary bedroom available, chose to live in a north-facing one. Unless the south-facing room had another use. But when we saw it, the south-facing room was empty. That leaves only one answer: she was used to living in a north-facing room, and that habit was probably formed while renting.”
“What do you mean?” Zhao Wu frowned. “Luo Sui is a local, born here, and went to college here. Someone like that usually wouldn’t need to rent a place alone, especially since her parents were posted overseas and she was the only one left at home. There’d be even less reason to rent.”
“What if Luo Sui rented out the house?” Huo Ranyin asked.
“There’s no record in the system—” Zhao Wu started, then quickly realized. “No, maybe Luo Sui really did have a roommate. It’s easy to bypass the system if you just don’t file the paperwork. Just like Li Ke renting from a second landlord. But that still doesn’t explain the habit you mentioned. Luo Sui was the landlord, and she was a girl too. Even if she rented the place out, she’d usually be more inclined to keep the south-facing room for herself, right?”
“That’s also the question I kept thinking about,” Huo Ranyin replied. “Then pay attention to this — the garbled Weibo account Old Hu saved.”
The Weibo content flashed onto the projector. Ji Xun had already been prepared.
“The garbled account was found by Old Hu using Luo Sui’s university ID. The user of that account was also Luo Sui herself, and it was full of negative posts like ‘want to die,’ ‘depressed,’ and ‘life has no hope.’ But Melancholy Blue-Court wasn’t.”
“Or rather, from a certain day onward, Melancholy Blue-Court was no longer Luo Sui.”
“The user had become Luo Sui’s roommate, Lanlan — the person Li Ke had been sending greeting messages to for three years under the account ‘Diligently Working Hard’ — in other words, the person currently lying in the hospital after attempting suicide.”
“That’s impossible!” Zhao Wu said firmly. “We compared the ID cards. The second-generation ID cards are linked to fingerprints. Fingerprints don’t lie — she is Luo Sui!”
“On that, let’s look at this Weibo post.”
He didn’t need Huo Ranyin to say which one. Ji Xun had already pulled up the relevant post.
Since they had reached the same truth, the road to it had to be similar too — or, to put it another way, one’s wife is naturally known best by one’s own self.
May 18, 2012, at 12:02 PM
【Made a very important decision…】
“Before 2012, ID cards didn’t require fingerprint registration. The fingerprint policy took effect on January 1, but it wasn’t through a universal replacement — it happened through replacements for lost cards and renewals upon expiration. Luo Sui’s ID card’s effective issuance date should have been May 18, 2012.”
“Under the pressure of severe depression and repeated suicidal thoughts, she decided to abandon her life. Coincidentally, her roommate Lanlan badly needed her identity. So she actively cooperated with Lanlan on May 18 and helped her apply for a new ID card. The fingerprints recorded in the system were Lanlan’s fingerprints.”
“Why did Lanlan want her identity? We can infer from the timeline.”
“After applying for the ID card on May 18, it would take about three working weeks — around June 8 — to receive it. Barely a week after getting the card, Lanlan started her new job on June 15. Medical-device sales didn’t need Luo Sui’s architectural knowledge, but a degree from a top university like Qinmen University was required.”
“Li Ke and Lanlan had known each other for a long time. One day he could no longer find Lanlan, so he kept sending messages for over three years. In his old jobs three years ago, he worked as a courier, a food delivery rider, a brick carrier, and a doorman at a bathhouse.”
“If Lanlan didn’t have a high degree, then to make a living in Qin City, there weren’t many jobs she could take. Working as a female attendant at a bathhouse, meeting Li Ke, and helping him at some point would be logically consistent.”
“On July 15, 2012, Lanlan got paid and specifically emphasized that she had changed to a hairstyle no one would recognize. I think by then the Weibo account ‘Melancholy Blue-Court’ had already been handed over from Luo Sui to Lanlan, while Luo Sui herself was venting her depressive feelings in a small account where no one could hear her.”
“There’s another piece of evidence for their identity swap: the staff at the medical company reported that ‘Luo Sui’s’ WeChat was blank, with almost no contacts other than coworkers.”
“Also… Lan Cungang.”
At this point Huo Ranyin looked at the projector again.
The projector was of course already prepared with new material. It was a household registration record that the technical guy had just pulled up at Ji Xun’s request: Lan Lan, granddaughter of Lan Cungang, born July 20, 1988. The photo was old, so there were slight differences from the current Luo Sui, but more interestingly, she also looked very much like the photo on Luo Sui’s Renren page.
“The nickname Lanlan can point to the English name for blue, and it can also point to the elderly man in the hospital who used Old Hu’s death certificate because he had a terminal illness. Only if Lan Cungang was Lan Lan’s relative would she, without intending to kill Old Hu, help treat Lan Cungang — because he was originally someone very important to her. She may have used Old Hu’s medical insurance card—”
The projector switched to the bank transaction records for Luo Sui and Old Hu. Huo Ranyin only glanced once before immediately circling a small transfer amount. It was the only recent transfer from Luo Sui’s account to Old Hu’s account. Ji Xun rested his chin in his hand, watching with great interest as Huo Ranyin laid out the clues.
“But she also paid back the money that needed to be reimbursed through medical insurance, and she didn’t spend Old Hu’s money. This was originally just a gray-area incident involving borrowing an insurance card, but that gray-area act was exploited.”
Huo Ranyin stopped there and looked at Ji Xun. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Me?”
“Mm. Now comes the story part.”
“How can you call it a story?” Ji Xun protested. “When all the logic has been pushed until there’s only one path left, of course that’s the truth of the matter — logic determines everything, and therefore determines truth.”
“Mm. Now please, Specialist Ji, tell us the truth.” Huo Ranyin began applauding first.
The Qin City officers were all the kind who liked joining in the fun, and they actually followed along, clapping loudly too.
Ji Xun: “…”
“Fine.” Ji Xun cleared his throat. “Then I’ll begin describing what happened next…”
“On July 20, 2012, Diligently Working Hard sent a private message to the account with the lily-of-the-valley avatar, which is to say Lan Lan’s account. That was the very first message: ‘Lanlan, don’t be unhappy.’”
“With a new job, and it also being her birthday, why would Lan Lan be unhappy? I was curious — was there something troubling her that day? So I had the tech guy recover the data from Sina. Please look—”
“This post was sent at 6:10 p.m., then made private only three minutes later, and by 10:10 p.m. that same night all the posts were deleted:
‘Why did you come to the company to find me!!! Are you crazy!!! Can’t the thing I ordered be delivered by the store? Why did you have to come yourself??? Why did you have to scare me today??? You regret it, don’t you??? You’re just trying to mess with me, aren’t you??? Please, just spare me, please. Why can’t you do it like you promised, the way you keep saying it again and again, but never actually do it!’”
“From this post, the ‘thing you ordered’ most likely refers to a cake. Lan Lan had just changed to a brand-new identity. Who could bring a cake that would make her so terrified? Obviously, it was the real Luo Sui. On Lan Lan’s birthday, Luo Sui brought a cake to Lan Lan’s workplace. What exactly was she thinking? Did she truly gather the courage to step out of the room on her best friend’s birthday, enter the society where her own identity had been erased, and try to make her friend happy with her? Or, as Lan Lan said, was it out of regret — was she trying to play a trick on Lan Lan… We can no longer know.”
“But one thing we can be sure of: Luo Sui wanted to die, but she didn’t dare to die. She hesitated, wavering back and forth.”
“And Lan Lan, having obtained the new life she had longed for, waited and waited, but the Luo Sui who kept saying she wanted to die never died. She became afraid that under prolonged delay Luo Sui might change her mind, and under some moment of confusion she made a decision.”
“She decided… to help Luo Sui along by trafficking her.”
“Fuck!” the deputy captain exploded. “Help? Is she insane? Calling selling a friend ‘helping’ her? How could she be so cruel?”
“I think before making that decision — and even after making it — Lan Lan bore a huge psychological burden. Think about it. How rare is it to rent a place and happen to meet a girl your own age who also looks somewhat similar to you? That kind of fate, built over years of companionship and comfort between Lan Lan and the depressed Luo Sui, formed a bond.”
“And that bond made Luo Sui empathize and genuinely want to help her friend, even giving her the most important thing that could prove she could live stably in society — an ID card.”
“She treated her friend with what she believed was compassion and sacrifice. That was her response to the help and compassion Lan Lan had once offered her when she was most desperate.”
“In the same way, that bond led Lan Lan to agree to Luo Sui’s plan. She knew her roommate so well, she knew that the other person’s parents didn’t care about their daughter at all, to the point where even a slightly wrong voice on the phone wouldn’t be noticed.”
“All the obstacles had already been flattened by Luo Sui herself. She only needed to take the final step. As long as she sold the friend she had once cried with, once laughed with, once embraced countless times, once relied on countless times—”
“—she could permanently occupy Luo Sui’s identity without fearing anything afterward.”
“That way, Lan Lan truly became Luo Sui. A compassionate heart dripped down into a poisonous crime.” Ji Xun said. “All right, story over.”
“An inch of kindness, a mile of resentment!” Zhao Wu said through clenched teeth.
“Oh, right.” Even though the story was over, Ji Xun still inserted a little extra. “I think Old Hu, as a net-savvy person, collected all these things so carefully and in such clearly categorized fashion because he had completely seen through Lan Lan’s true identity and the evil she was carrying out. That day, Old Hu really did fish out the trafficking location, but he probably didn’t rescue anyone — he just stood by and watched coldly. There, he also found Lan Lan, who had secretly come to confirm whether Luo Sui had really been taken, and that was how they met and fell in love.”
In August 2012, Lan Lan used the darknet to sell Luo Sui onto a ship, and because of that she fell in love with Hu Kun.
In March 2016, for Hu Kun’s inheritance, Lu Song did not choose kidnapping on the darknet. Instead, he bought poison and followed Lan Lan, witnessing the scene where Hu Zheng kidnapped Lan Lan. After he left, because Lan Lan cried out for help desperately, a kind bystander saved her and called the police.
That kind of story would no longer resemble the earlier, coincidental guess Deputy Captain Mai had made.
And because Lan Lan had not been the one kidnapped four years ago, she had no psychological trauma over the beach or the harbor, which was why she had walked into the container without much vigilance and been locked inside.
And because she was the perpetrator, she had been so uneasy in the police bureau and so anxious to leave.
“These two are such fucking self-inflicted fools!” Zhao Wu cursed, frowning. “What about the real Luo Sui? Was she sold right under our noses?”
“She was probably sold off four years ago,” Ji Xun replied. With the case analysis having basically reached the truth, he simply said the rest in one breath. “Now that Lan Lan’s identity swap has been exposed, and Lan Cungang’s existence has been perfectly explained, then only one thing remains — who actually killed Old Hu?”
“The place where Old Hu died was the home theater. If Lan Lan and he were watching a movie together that day, and the phone was left outside, it’s possible she didn’t hear the call. After the hospital couldn’t reach him, they called Hu Zheng, who was out of town. Hu Zheng certainly wouldn’t contact the Luo Sui he disliked, so he could only call Granny Mei to confirm — just like when Old Hu was at the container on the beach, it was also Granny Mei who came to pick him up.”
“Granny Mei answered the call — she knew the person in the hospital wasn’t Old Hu, because Old Hu was at home watching a movie. And in that instant, she suddenly thought of a perfect plan.”
“She went in, found an excuse to send Lan Lan away, then served Old Hu food mixed with the poisonous lily-of-the-valley. Before Lan Lan could react, Old Hu was dead.”
“Lan Lan was stunned. But before she could recover, she was first threatened by Granny Mei. Somehow — maybe from the files she had from living with Old Hu, maybe from everyday conversation, maybe from Lan Cungang, who had been staying in the hospital that she had investigated — Granny Mei also discovered Lan Lan’s tightly guarded secret.”
“She used that secret to threaten Lan Lan.”
“Lan Lan wanted to hide the fact that she had trafficked Luo Sui. She wanted to conceal her true identity, so she couldn’t explain her relationship with Lan Cungang to everyone. Helplessly, she had no choice but to become Granny Mei’s accomplice. She went to the hospital, handled the claim procedures, refused the hospital’s help, and alone transported Lan Cungang’s corpse back to the rented apartment… helping Granny Mei conceal the murder tied to Old Hu.”
Ji Xun paused there, then continued:
“The love between Hu Kun and Lan Lan began with one lie and was buried in another. Granny Mei carefully accompanied the two of them in telling lies that seemed harmless, then ultimately used those lies to kill — just like Luo Sui and Lan Lan at the beginning.”
“After that, it’s the story we all already know.”
“Granny Mei — Mei Lili.”
“Lily-of-the-valley is a flower that blooms in May, also called May Lily. Mei Lili did not hesitate to use her own name to kill Hu Kun. That old woman’s name — Lan Lan didn’t care, Hu Kun didn’t care, and we, without taking statements, wouldn’t have cared either.”
“No one cared.”
“Not about her pain, and not about her evil.”
