When mentioning his ex-girlfriend with whom he was forced to break up because of his studies, Su Xiaobo looked incredibly sorrowful: “Sigh, what’s wrong with online dating? Is it that weird? The internet is so developed nowadays. You don’t necessarily have to interact in reality just to get to know someone. Surfing the web and doing just about anything can lead to meeting new friends… Don’t tell me you guys still discriminate against online dating?”
The moment Chi Qing heard Xie Lin repeat the words “online dating,” he already knew what he meant.
All this time, they had been locking down the suspect within the school premises, but they had forgotten the most crucial link.
The killer might not necessarily be someone from Honghai No. 6 High School.
In other words, it was entirely possible for the killer to have known the deceased through other avenues.
Yu Lan’s death was a prime example.
Yu Lan lived too far away from the school. Even if her identity was Yu Yang’s older sister—a girl like her, who usually wouldn’t get into conflicts with others no matter how one thought about it, had no reason to be murdered.
Furthermore, during Yu Yang’s interrogation that day, they had engaged in the following conversation:
—— “Does your sister know any of your classmates? Or maybe from your previous classes?”
—— “My sister doesn’t know my classmates. Of course, I’m absolutely certain of it. It’s very difficult for her to communicate with people, so aside from work, she avoids contact with others as much as possible at any other time. I often joke that she has ‘social anxiety’.”
—— “Then what if classmates usually come over to your house?”
—— “My sister would tidy up the house ahead of time, then go to the bookstore to read. She would only return after my classmates left.”
“Uncles, you guys are way too old-fashioned!”
Su Xiaobo thought they simply found online dating strange, so he felt compelled to vindicate it, adding: “The number of people you can meet around you is just so limited. It’s nothing more than everyone happening to go to the same school or living in the same residential complex. But on the internet, you can meet people from all corners of the country, expanding the scope of finding your destiny. Doesn’t that make it easier to encounter true love?!”
Having spent a long time with Chi Qing, Xie Lin didn’t always just say nice things either. Occasionally following along with a sharp tongue, he remarked: “So basically, you’re just not very popular at school.”
Su Xiaobo’s face flushed red: “I just haven’t met them yet! I haven’t met them yet!”
Xie Lin: “Alright, whatever. Anyway, I don’t really understand you people who look for a partner online. After all, I don’t need to look for my partner on the internet.”
Su Xiaobo: “……”
Xie Lin thought to himself, Why is this kid so slow on the uptake? “Aren’t you going to ask me who my partner is?”
“I’m going to be late for school, uncles,” Su Xiaobo didn’t want to continue this humiliating topic. “I have an exam tomorrow, and my psychological stress is already huge. Can you please stop devastating me? I feel like I might still end up dead last this time.”
Chi Qing: “You can have a bit more confidence in yourself. With your level of competence—where you haven’t even memorized the first page of the vocabulary booklet—it’s not a ‘might,’ it’s a certainty.”
Su Xiaobo didn’t want to stay in this car for even a single second longer.
The car drove up to the entrance of Guangyuan School.
Guangyuan’s school uniform was different from Honghai’s. The light-colored uniforms looked exceptionally fresh, and the students entered the school in an orderly fashion with their backpacks on.
Xie Lin watched Su Xiaobo hurriedly hide his phone inside his clothing pocket as he walked into the school gates. He slowly rolled up the car window, and the interior of the car instantly fell silent.
He analyzed: “Yu Lan wasn’t good at socializing with people.”
“There is more or less a certain degree of low self-esteem involved in this. She was insecure about her inability to speak, feared the strange looks when facing her younger brother’s classmates, and was also afraid that if she appeared, the people at school would gossip about her brother.” After all, those boring school gossips spread faster than the internet. It didn’t take much—just a single phrase like “Hey, did you guys know? Yu Yang’s sister is actually mute” would instantly spread like wildfire throughout the entire grade.
Chi Qing followed up with the conclusion: “Therefore, it is impossible for her to have gotten to know anyone inside Honghai School.”
Xie Lin: “The killer acts in an orderly fashion; it wasn’t an impulsive murder, nor was it a crime of passion. To be able to kill several people in succession without leaving any clues behind means he (or she) planned this meticulously. Furthermore, if the killer isn’t Jiang Yiyun, it indicates that the suspicion has constantly been directed toward Jiang Yiyun. Since that’s the case, why would he (or she) make a move on Yu Lan?”
It defied logic.
Yu Lan was indeed the most “illogical” relevant figure in this case.
……
The two of them clearly realized it.
This seemingly illogical aspect might, perhaps, also be the biggest flaw left behind by the killer.
“We’ll know the answers to these questions once we catch the killer, but Su Xiaobo still provided us with a line of thought. There is still a place in this case that needs to be screened,” Xie Lin said finally. “——Online.”
“Online?”
Hearing those two words, the other members of the task force were all stunned.
Xie Lin raised his hand to unbutton two of his sleeve buttons, walked over to the whiteboard, and circled a few crime scene photos: “When each victim was discovered, they all had a phone on them—Wang Yuan, Jin Hongbo, Ma Hui, Yu Lan.”
“Phones are far too common in daily life. Almost no one goes out without carrying a phone, so we hadn’t paid attention to it before. But if you think about it carefully, these three students didn’t listen well in class and could only play with their phones during lectures. Their online world is far more abundant than that of ordinary high school students.”
“Then what about Yu Lan?” someone asked.
Sitting below, Chi Qing answered coldly on Xie Lin’s behalf: “Yu Lan couldn’t speak. Her daily communication with people relied entirely on typing.”
Hearing this, the others suddenly saw the light.
Aside from the characteristic of “dating,” the three of them also shared this common trait—that is, the internet occupied a very large proportion of their lives.
They were different from everyone present. Ji Mingrui and the others were busy with work and didn’t even get enough sleep, so they simply had no spare time to go out and make internet friends.
As for Chi Qing, from the very moment he obtained a phone, regardless of whether he knew the person or not, he handled all users by putting them straight onto his blacklist.
Ji Mingrui squeezed his pen and said: “Speaking of which… phones are indeed critical. We must screen their online friends list to see if there are any mutual friends.”
The five members of the team quickly applied to the higher-ups and obtained the keys to the computer room.
There were three rows of computers inside the computer room, and they could directly begin the screening work.
Ji Mingrui, Xie Lin, and Chi Qing were responsible for screening the friends list. When screening, they naturally couldn’t ask directly; they had to create an alternate account on WeiChat to quietly probe around. The remaining people were responsible for scanning through games and other social software inside the phones.
Generally speaking, in online socializing, no matter where they got to know each other during the early stages, if they wanted to develop into long-term internet friends, they would definitely migrate over to WeiChat in the end.
Therefore, the task for the three of them was the heaviest.
Chi Qing fell silent for a moment after receiving the alternate account allocated to him.
To lower the other side’s vigilance, the alternate account he received was a female account. The profile picture showed long, flowing hair, and the age column stated 17 years old.
For this entire day, their task force turned into an online surfing group.
Ji Mingrui quickly added a friend from Wang Yuan’s list, concealing his true identity to chat for over ten minutes: “Damn, this person is a seller of exam answers! Wang Yuan was quite a character too—he spent money to buy answers yet still did so poorly on the exam. This answer seller said the answers he sold were one hundred percent accurate, but when Wang Yuan filled out the answer sheet, he didn’t follow the sequence of the answer sheet. Afterwards, he even shared it with others, and as a result, all three of them ended up at the absolute bottom. They even went to make a scene with this answer seller, making him completely speechless.”
Xie Lin was even faster. The man lazily stretched out his fingers behind the computer and said: “On my side, I’ve got a few—one is a game booster, and two are gaming friends.”
Ji Mingrui: “How are you so fast?”
He glanced at the time: “Only ten minutes or so have passed…”
Xie Lin: “Is it that hard to chat with three people simultaneously?”
……
What kind of pickup artist remark was that?
Xie Lin added another sentence: “Cough, they even wanted to add me as a friend, but I refused them all.”
This sentence was spoken directly to Chi Qing.
Last time, just because he said a few more words to that sophomore teacher, this person got incredibly jealous.
After he finished speaking, he asked again: “How is your chatting going?”
Xie Lin noticed that there didn’t seem to be much movement on Chi Qing’s end.
His partner’s gloved fingers typed a few characters on the keyboard, then stopped. After a while, he would continue to tap a few more times.
The frequency was shockingly low.
Chi Qing fell silent for a moment and asked: “What does it mean when a message fails to send halfway through a conversation, displaying ‘The other party is not your friend yet’?”
Xie Lin: “A notification that you’ve been blacklisted.”
“Oh,” Chi Qing said expressionlessly, “Then I’ve been blacklisted.”
“……”
Xie Lin’s seat was opposite him. Hearing this, he arched an eyebrow, stood up, walked over, and stood behind Chi Qing. With one hand propped on the desk, he leaned down to look at the computer screen. If his chin went just a bit lower, it would touch the top of Chi Qing’s head.
“Let me see what you’ve been chatting about.”
Three or four chat boxes were open on Chi Qing’s computer screen.
But this wasn’t because he knew how to converse like Xie Lin; it was purely because every single conversation ended too quickly, which was why so many had been opened.
Not a single chat box exceeded three lines of dialogue.
The other side: Who are you?
Chi Qing: Who I am has nothing to do with you.
The other side: ?
Another one was slightly more lively. Judging by the profile picture, it was a girl, who sent over a soft emoji: Hi! Hello there, this is Xiao Yue 2333~
Chi Qing, as a person with zero online surfing experience, asked: Xiao Yue 2333?
The girl hadn’t noticed anything wrong at this point: Mm-hmm.
Chi Qing truly didn’t know how to chat in response to this “mm-hmm,” so he could only type out a sentence: Why do you need to add numbers behind your name? Don’t you find it strange when pronouncing it?
The girl: ……
After Xie Lin browsed through all the chat interfaces, a low chuckle escaped from his throat, and then he couldn’t stop it: “Is this how you chat with people?”
The moment he said this sentence, the others put down their screening work to come over and watch: “……Whoa.”
Ji Mingrui: “Now you know why back in high school we had to build a separate class group chat behind your back? You’ve achieved something that previously only the homeroom teacher could accomplish.”
Chi Qing was at the end of his patience: “……Are you guys that free?”
After jeering, several people returned to their seats to continue being busy.
Chi Qing was just about to contact the next one. While searching for an account in the search bar, the computer gave a “beep,” and a red exclamation mark popped up—someone had added him as a friend.
Chi Qing scanned it and found it was an unfamiliar account.
The account name was very concise—a single English letter, “L.”
Intuition told Chi Qing that this “L” should be a certain someone.
[You are now friends, start chatting now!]
Chi Qing sat there. From this angle, he could see the hand of the man opposite him casually tapping on the keyboard, his fingers distinctly jointed, a silver ring flashing with a cold light.
At the same time the sound of keyboard tapping ended on the opposite side, the new friend sent over a message.
L: It’s fine. You don’t need to know how to chat with others, just chat with me.
