Wen Chenghu’s small truck was driven back to the police station. In addition to the hair samples previously found in the vehicle, the police discovered several receipts tucked inside the sun visor on the passenger side.
There were receipts for car washes, spray painting, and various decorative items.
Judging by the dates on the receipts, Wen Chenghu had the car washed and repainted on October 9th, ’97. It seems he gave the entire small truck a complete makeover, inside and out, on that day.
Furthermore, the dinosaur doll, the tiger doll, and the Ultraman figure were all purchased on October 8th. In other words, not only did he buy the dolls, he specifically took a new photo of himself with them and hung it in the car.
Because the car had been washed by Wen Chenghu and had not been used much by the Wen family since, there were only nine distinct hair samples found in the vehicle.
After excluding Wen Meihua and the three Wen brothers—the four people who had regular access—as well as the two officers who worked the case back then, there were three hair samples remaining whose origin remained unclear.
By the time all the results were in, it was already late at night. There weren’t many people left at the station; only Zhao Wu, the deputy captain, Huo Ranyin, and Ji Xun remained.
Of the four, three were near Wen Chenghu’s truck, so Zhao Wu naturally brought the files to the front courtyard.
Walking into the yard, they saw the deputy captain slurping on a bowl of freshly prepared instant noodles. The aggressive, spicy aroma of the noodles shot straight to their noses, awakening the hunger of their drowsy stomachs and causing them to churn with hunger immediately.
Turning to look at Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin, the two were sitting on small stools, with another stool placed between them. On that stool were two plates: one with pickled plums and sunflower seeds, and the other with the pits and shells.
Huo Ranyin was shelling sunflower seeds and looked up at him.
“Three samples. Not many. Do you have a direction for the investigation?”
“Out of the three, it’s highly likely that the car wash worker from back then left their hair behind. Fortunately, there’s a name on the receipts, so finding them shouldn’t be too hard. Worst case, we vet everyone. Through the police database, we found a criminal named Xu Zhili who has the same Y-chromosome as the hair samples. In an ideal scenario, we hope to get at least a few clues from this.”
Zhao Wu pulled up a stool and sat down, asking the deputy captain: “Any more noodles?”
“Yeah,” the deputy captain answered while eating, kicking another box of instant noodles from under his chair toward Zhao Wu.
Zhao Wu couldn’t be bothered to care about how many months it had been since the deputy captain washed his shoes; he ripped off the plastic seal and poured in the hot water.
Amidst the suddenly rising steam, Huo Ranyin whispered:
“Xu?”
But the voice was too low; neither Zhao Wu nor the deputy captain heard it. Ji Xun heard it. He looked up, his gaze shifting to Huo Ranyin’s face.
In that instant, the same question flashed through both their minds.
Xu Zhili.
Xu Chengzhang.
Could there be a blood relationship between these two?
Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin had not yet informed Zhao Wu and the others about the friendship between Xu Chengzhang and Wen Chenghu.
Of course, it wasn’t a deliberate concealment of important evidence.
In truth, while they had found the car, which provided a certain breakthrough in the case, a closer look revealed that they were still in a very passive position regarding this twenty-year-old case—
The hair found in the car couldn’t directly prove a connection to Wen Chenghu’s murder; it only proved that the individuals had perhaps been in that car at some point.
And there was another possibility that couldn’t be ignored:
What if the killer had driven the car but hadn’t left any hair behind at all?
Ji Xun voiced this concern.
Zhao Wu’s hand, which was stirring the noodles with a fork, paused, before he resumed stirring at a steady pace.
“That is a very likely scenario. But with no further clues, we can only investigate what we have. For a twenty-year-old case, being unable to find an answer is the norm; being able to solve it is the exception.”
Every competent police officer wants to find the killer in a vicious homicide.
But regardless, there are situations where, even after exhausting all efforts, a conclusion cannot be reached.
The group went silent. Huo Ranyin ate sunflower seeds, Ji Xun nibbled on plums, and Zhao Wu and the deputy captain ate their noodles to stave off their hunger.
Nobody spoke; everyone was racking their brains. Ji Xun was thinking hard as well.
The killer killed him, got into the car…
Did the killer have anything in their hands? Maybe—the weapon, perhaps, that hadn’t been disposed of on the mountain… or maybe not, the weapon could have been disposed of directly on the mountain…
But Wen Chenghu bled.
A lot of blood.
The killer shattered Wen Chenghu’s skull and castrated him…
The killer must have been splattered with blood…
Did the killer take any precautions? Like wearing a raincoat or a plastic suit?
No—on the mountain, in the evening, on a clear day, wearing something strange would draw too much attention and would only increase the vigilance of Wen Chenghu, who was otherwise off-guard. The killer wouldn’t have chosen that…
The killer was wearing normal clothes. Those clothes were stained with the victim’s blood, but it didn’t matter… right, it didn’t matter. The killer had prepared. The killer brought a new jacket to replace the blood-stained one…
So where would the blood-stained jacket be put?
On the mountain?
Impossible.
It had to be taken down and disposed of.
The killer had the jacket, got into the car, put the jacket into a plastic bag, and placed the bag on the passenger seat…
Ji Xun suddenly stood up from his stool.
He put on the necessary protective gear, pulled open the car door, and climbed in.
There were only two things on the passenger seat: a green dinosaur plushie and an Ultraman model.
A killer who had just finished murdering someone would normally experience an unusual state of agitation. If, at this moment, the killer was in a state of excitement, agitation… or even anger… what would they do?
Fiddle with the steering wheel?
Clutch the seatbelt tightly?
Or…
Ji Xun picked up the two toys from the passenger seat, looking at them over and over. Suddenly, he turned the green dinosaur plushie head-in, tail-out, and said to the three people standing outside:
“Was the dinosaur’s tail resewn?”
The three were stunned.
Zhao Wu was the fastest; he sprinted to the car, took the evidence from Ji Xun’s hands, and squinted.
Before he could reach a conclusion, the deputy captain pushed him aside: “Let me see! I handle all the needlework in my house!”
He wasn’t bragging. One glance was enough for him to say with certainty: “It’s a repair. Look, the stitches where the tail meets the body are messy. It was definitely sewn by a novice.”
“The doll was only bought on the 8th. Given how much importance Wen Chenghu placed on decorating the car, the probability of him not noticing such a flaw is extremely low. Therefore…” Huo Ranyin said in a deep voice.
“It is highly likely that the killer got into the car that night, damaged the doll, and because they couldn’t immediately find an identical brand-new one, they sewed it back up themselves!” Ji Xun concluded.
After the brief excitement, Zhao Wu was the first to calm down.
“It won’t work. If this were a recent case, we could visit convenience stores and ask the owners if anyone came in to buy thread. But this was twenty years ago…”
Time is truly an entity that can obliterate everything.
Good, bad, just, evil—all have a fair passage of time before them.
“Why go through all that trouble! Just check the thread ends!” the deputy captain interrupted.
“Check the thread ends?”
“Have none of you ever done needlework?”
The three of them had indeed never done any.
“Don’t you know that when someone is unskilled at threading a needle, they use their mouths to wet the thread end? That’s the only way to get it through!”
Right!
Reminded, the group realized the truth.
As long as it had been wetted by mouth, there would be DNA on the thread end!
The green dinosaur suddenly received special treatment.
It was carefully placed in an evidence bag and sent to the police laboratory. But it was late; the lab technicians had already gone home. To get the answer, they would have to wait until tomorrow morning when everyone arrived to begin the testing.
Having found a new lead, the day hadn’t been in vain.
After finishing their food, the group cleaned up the debris and the chairs, left the station, and headed home.
That night, although they were tired, sleep was fitful.
Ji Xun woke up three times throughout the night. The first two times, in the dim light, he saw Huo Ranyin sleeping on his side. The thick darkness seemed like black lacquer, pressing down heavily, almost merging with the lines of Huo Ranyin’s back, fading until they were indistinguishable, as if the night had dissolved Huo Ranyin, or as if Huo Ranyin had hidden himself in the night.
By the third time he opened his eyes, there was no one beside him.
The quilt was neatly spread over the other half of the bed, but it was empty beneath, as if the person who belonged there had truly been swallowed by the darkness.
Ji Xun rubbed his head and sat up, holding the quilt.
He felt for his phone on the nightstand, tapped the screen, and took a look: 4:30 AM. He felt the mattress beside him; it still seemed to hold a trace of warmth. The person hadn’t been gone for long.
Huo Ranyin arrived at the medical facility where they had done the paternity test at 9:00 AM.
Such institutions always opened their doors at nine.
He was carrying a bag. He was about to enter, and the transparent glass doors sensed his figure and slid open silently. However, he changed his pace, turned aside, took his phone out of his pocket, and dialed Ji Xun’s number.
The call connected, but the ringing sound was faint and distant, coming from the lobby of the facility behind him.
Huo Ranyin followed the sound, surprised to find a person sitting in the lobby’s waiting area, covered by a yellow-green jacket.
The jacket looked familiar.
Both of them were away from home; they only had one or two pieces of clothing that they kept rotating.
He walked up, pulled down the jacket, and met Ji Xun’s sleepy eyes.
“Guessed I would come?” Huo Ranyin didn’t beat around the bush.
“Uh-huh.”
“I didn’t intend to cut you out,” Huo Ranyin said. “I just went to find something. I would have contacted you after finding it.”
“I know. You just said you believed in me; surely a detective captain’s trust doesn’t have a shelf life of less than 48 hours.” Ji Xun straightened his back and sat up.
After speaking, he glanced down at the bag in Huo Ranyin’s hand.
“Did you find it?”
“Likely.”
“Then let’s take care of the important business first.”
The items were handed over to the service desk: filling out forms, expedited processing, paying fees—all things they had done the day before. Repeating the process felt like yesterday playing out all over again.
Afterward, Huo Ranyin returned to Ji Xun’s side.
They sat shoulder to shoulder.
Compared to the last time, they seemed much calmer this time.
Ji Xun stared at a mirror in the lobby. The mirror reflected the window behind him, and the window reflected the street scene outside. Separated by two layers, after watching for a long time, the figures and the shadows of the trees added a flow of light, becoming hazy and unreal.
“This case, from a reasoning perspective, is solved.”
Ji Xun spoke slowly. He didn’t ask Huo Ranyin.
Since Huo Ranyin had left in the middle of the night to find something, he must have guessed the answer as well.
It wasn’t complicated, but it was a truth they initially hadn’t dared to delve into.
“Hiding a corpse in a Buddha statue requires the killer to know the work schedule of the construction site. This was not a crime of opportunity, but a carefully planned murder. Therefore, Wen Chenghu’s arrival at Daye Temple was not a coincidence, but an inevitability; he was going to a date meticulously crafted with lies.”
“For this, he sold his shop, sold his house, meticulously painted the car, took photos, placed the dolls, and brought the rare Tamagotchi.”
“He was going to see someone he imagined would like these things—”
“A child.”
Ji Xun said the most critical word in the case.
“Wen Chenghu was unmarried and had no children. His younger brother once said that his brother had over 200,000 yuan under his bed, and he didn’t know where it came from. He was surprised and secretly followed his brother, seeing him press all the money into someone’s arms, looking quite happy…”
“If we connect this to the child and make a speculation:”
“Those 200,000 yuan were a reward. A reward to buy a child that wasn’t his. Of course, he was happy.”
“Wen Chenghu gave the money to the killer. After the killer took the money, they told him: ‘The child can be yours, but there is a condition: you must take the child and move away from this city.'”
“Wen Chenghu thought this was a precaution to prevent the child from missing their former family, so he happily agreed. But he didn’t expect that the killer was cutting off his social ties to make his disappearance difficult to detect.”
“Just like the meeting on the mountain, everything was a cage the killer laid out for Wen Chenghu using the child, waiting for him to jump in, full of expectation, joy, and willingness.”
Ji Xun said simply.
After finishing the part about Wen Chenghu, he talked about the killer’s part.
“After the killer finished the murder, they got into Wen Chenghu’s car—the car that wasn’t in their plan. The reason they chose to vent their emotions on the dinosaur doll was that, like Wen Chenghu, they also cared about the child. They were, in fact, enraged by Wen Chenghu’s pandering to and coveting of the child.”
“Who was this child? Why did both the killer and Wen Chenghu care about them so much?”
Ji Xun turned to Huo Ranyin, his eyes flickering.
“We once speculated that Wen Chenghu was one of the criminals in the Huo Qiyu case, and you went to do a DNA paternity test because of it.”
“But twenty years ago, there were no DNA tests. If the child favored the mother and did not violate the laws of blood type inheritance, the two rapists wouldn’t know themselves who the biological father was.”
“On those quiet nights, looking out at the sky like an abyss, and the starlight peering into their evil deeds, they must have thought countless times, struggled countless times—”
“That child is his.”
“That child is not his.”
“Wen Chenghu and his accomplice raped Huo Qiyu that night. The accomplice gave him a lot of money; that is the origin of those 200,000 yuan that came from nowhere.”
“He returned the money to the accomplice because he longed for the child to be his. Compared to the child, money was not important. People are always like this—obsessively greedy. When emotions are cultivated to be rich and full by material desires, one starts to expect human blood ties and wants to invest emotionally.”
“The accomplice was not happy when they received the money, only angry. Because Wen Chenghu’s coveting of the child was a resounding slap in the face, reminding them once again that the child might not be theirs.”
“The accomplice, that is, the killer, had for the child far more possession, hatred, or—”
Ji Xun paused for a moment, saying with some difficulty:
“Love.”
“They had never had the thought of killing Wen Chenghu for many years, but in that moment, because of this naked coveting, they acted.”
The answer was complete.
Behind every murder lie distorted scenes of love and hate, and mistakes often made in a split second.
Together, they brew a mad chapter in the world of men.
“This is a murder originating from a child, and it is a murder ultimately exposed by the child.”
“That green dinosaur doll told us everything.”
After the truth was deduced, they remained silent for a long time.
At a time when Huo Ranyin did not know it, a slaughter had begun because of him; at a time when Huo Ranyin did not know it, the truth of this slaughter had been buried by him.
This sin, related to and yet unrelated to Huo Ranyin, came to an end today.
The laboratory sent out the report.
Huo Ranyin opened it: white background, black text:
Based on the DNA test results, the probability of a blood relationship between Huo Ranyin and Xu Chengzhang is 99.9999%.
