That afternoon, Ji Xun met Zheng Xuewang in the police station’s interrogation room.
One-on-one, Zheng Xuewang faced him.
It didn’t quite align with police protocol, but this wasn’t an official interrogation anyway. The police still needed to gather more evidence to solidify the charges against Zheng Xuewang before they could close the case, transfer it to the procuratorate, and proceed down the judicial path.
However, as far as Ji Xun was concerned, both Zheng Xuewang’s motive and his methods had already yielded definitive answers.
Consequently, this case regarding Chen Jiashu was already closed in Ji Xun’s mind.
Before officially speaking, Ji Xun first observed Zheng Xuewang.
The doctor, temporarily detained at the station as a major suspect, looked as though he hadn’t slept well the previous night. His hair was slightly disheveled, and his expression was weary. Before Ji Xun could speak, he spoke first, letting out a sigh and appearing remarkably sincere: “Officer, I admit that I took advantage of the nature of my profession to do a few things against regulations. Regarding those matters, I have already recognized my mistakes and reflected deeply. But I really didn’t kill anyone. It’s meaningless for the police to waste time on me. I believe the person who killed Chen Jiashu is none other than the person who stole my true medical records.”
The medical records.
Zheng Xuewang had mentioned this back at the villa. While he was falsifying Chen Jiashu’s medical history, he also held a genuine copy in his hands.
Except, of course, the true record had vanished without a trace, and dead men tell no tales.
“You had a twin brother,” Ji Xun tossed out a conversational opening casually.
He didn’t care much about how he began the conversation. This meeting wasn’t a tactical game between two sides; it was a notification of “I have already uncovered the truth.”
“Yes, that’s right. His name was Xuejun,” Zheng Xuewang replied flatly.
“I saw photos of you two at your house. You and your brother looked remarkably alike and had similar builds. At a glance, you looked like the exact same person.”
Zheng Xuewang smiled faintly. “Xuejun and I were identical twins, sharing the same genes. That’s why we looked more alike than fraternal twins.”
“I’ve heard that twins possess something other siblings don’t, like telepathy. Did you two have that?”
“From a scientific perspective, that’s nonsense. From the reality of our situation, at least for myself, I never encountered anything of the sort.”
“So you were just like ordinary twins, occasionally swapping identities?” Ji Xun said.
But this time, Zheng Xuewang did not answer Ji Xun’s question. The weary doctor’s exhaustion seemed to exist only on the surface; he was constantly and calmly analyzing every single word uttered by anyone who appeared before him.
“Officer, you’re trying to induce a confession. That’s against regulations, isn’t it?”
“I just borrowed a room to have a chat with you,” Ji Xun shrugged. “This doesn’t even qualify as an interrogation, and our conversation isn’t being recorded at all, so how could it be ‘inducing a confession’? …But to be honest, Zheng Xuewang, the person who should have died back then really wasn’t Zheng Xuejun. It was you.”
Zheng Xuewang actually remained completely composed. He replied unhurriedly:
“Officer, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I was indeed devastated by my brother’s death. But fate… sometimes fate is just that cold. Admittedly, as entities that triumphed among hundreds of millions of sperm to fuse with an egg and be successfully born, we naturally possess a pride etched into our bones of standing atop other living things… But this pride is fragile, just as life is fragile. Incredibly fragile. On Earth, someone passes away every single second.”
“I wished for my brother to live a long life, but unfortunately… in that exact second twenty years ago, my brother died.”
“How touching,” Ji Xun smiled faintly. “Do you miss your brother?”
Zheng Xuewang unexpectedly offered no answer.
Ji Xun continued on his own: “Of course you miss him. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have kept in touch with Li Xiaochu for twenty years without interruption just to memorialize your brother. The police have already contacted Li Xiaochu. According to her recollection, on the day Zheng Xuejun fell to his death, they had a date. Given that they had an arrangement beforehand, Zheng Xuejun broke the appointment to participate in a fight. Was it because the fight was a spontaneous decision? Regrettably, that fight wasn’t spontaneous either. Why the two pre-planned arrangements conflicted is easily resolved the moment you look at it from a different angle…”
“Because the one who was supposed to go to that abandoned factory that day wasn’t Zheng Xuejun at all. It was you, Zheng Xuewang,” Ji Xun stated, emphasizing every single word.
“……”
“We often use the term ‘two-faced’ to mock how a person displays different attitudes in front of different people. Zheng Xuewang, your attitude toward superiors and colleagues when you were at the hospital was beyond reproach. In their eyes, if you weren’t flawless, you were at least a young man of great promise. But in the mouths of those nurses, your image becomes questionable. After all, when you put on an act for too long, you get tired, and you need an outlet to vent—just like during your adolescence.”
“During your adolescence, you were a well-behaved child and an excellent student in front of your parents and teachers. People always possess vanity and value appearances; it’s only natural not to want to ruin a good image because of vanity and appearances. However, acting like a good kid for a long time, unable to do a single rebellious thing day after day—how exhausting. Fortuitously, you had a twin brother, which was even better. Your brother was a wild child who didn’t care much for academic success. So, during those moments when you occasionally wanted to relax or rebel, you only needed to do a very simple thing: persuade your brother to temporarily lend you his identity.”
“Ridiculous,” Zheng Xuewang stared at his hands. His gaze seemed fixed, much like his hands. “No matter how much twins look alike, while unfamiliar outsiders might not tell them apart, could their own family fail to distinguish them?”
“I’m afraid it wasn’t a matter of failing to distinguish them, but rather a complete lack of desire to do so,” Ji Xun said. “People always tend to believe what they want to believe. They believed you were a piece of fine jade with a brilliant future, so your exterior could not bear a single flaw. As for your brother—a crack more or less on a broken clay pot, what did it matter? I imagine you understood this logic long ago, because during your student days, you lived in such an environment forever… your parents’ favoritism, your teachers’ praise, your classmates’ envy, and the high regard of relatives and neighbors. A starkly different living environment from your brother’s.”
“……”
Zheng Xuewang remained silent; perhaps he had nothing left to say.
“On April 1, 1996, a pre-arranged fight that you were supposed to attend was attended by your brother instead—who was supposed to be on a date with Li Xiaochu. Perhaps something unexpected came up for you that day, or perhaps you simply regretted it at the last minute and didn’t want to go… In the end, Zheng Xuejun went to a point-of-no-return fight in place of Zheng Xuewang. Zheng Xuejun replaced Zheng Xuewang, falling forever onto the floor tiles of the abandoned factory, lying upon the pale bed of the hospital.”
“The one who should have died was you,” Ji Xun softly repeated the words he had spoken earlier. “Zheng Xuewang, you let your biological brother take your place on the death toll.”
The ashes preserved in the photographs, the correspondence every April first, the boxes of building blocks stacked at home—these were likely the manifestation of a guilt that was devouring his conscience day by day.
His motive for murdering Chen Jiashu was incredibly potent.
Zheng Xuewang raised his head, his black irises staring intently at Ji Xun.
The mask invisible to the naked eye peeled gently away from his face. Stripped of the mask, the face was still the same face, yet the person seemed entirely different from before.
Then, Zheng Xuewang unexpectedly curled his lips into a slight smile.
A very bizarre smile.
This smile lingered for a while before a voice leaked from his mouth, as if suddenly the audio and visual had fallen out of sync.
“You’re right. I should avenge Xuejun. We are brothers, originating from the same paternal body, coexisting within the same maternal body, and even possessing entirely identical genes. No one in this world will ever be closer than us. From this, our blood kinship was born. Officer, do you think blood gives birth to affection, or does affection bind blood?”
Something was wrong.
Zheng Xuewang’s reaction was a bit strange.
While Ji Xun’s expression remained unchanged, his heart tightened slightly.
Was he blustering, intentionally creating a smoke screen?
That possibility existed, but…
“Whichever it is, it doesn’t matter.”
Ji Xun wasn’t granted sufficient time to think; Zheng Xuewang spoke up again quickly.
“None of what you just said carries any meaning.” Zheng Xuewang sat as steady as a mountain, smiling at Ji Xun. “I indeed possess a motive to murder Chen Jiashu, but a motive is just a motive. Unless you find irrefutable physical evidence of me committing the murder, even if the case is submitted to the procuratorate, it will just be sent back for you to continue investigating. Am I right, Officer?”
“Spot on,” Ji Xun returned a smile. “It seems you feel completely secure.”
Zheng Xuewang still hadn’t admitted to killing Chen Jiashu, yet he didn’t seem to deny killing Chen Jiashu either.
He threw the difficult problem back to the police, wearing a cold sneer as if watching a good show.
Everything that needed to be said had been said; staying any longer seemed utterly pointless.
Ji Xun stood up and left the interrogation room.
The moment he stepped out, his shoulder was struck with a thud. Tan Mingjiu came bounding over to Ji Xun, throwing an arm around his neck to clamp him tightly, looking both thrilled and exasperated: “Old Ji, leave a bit of room for us frontline workers to survive, will you? I don’t remember you being this cool before. Turns out these past three years you weren’t spacing out at home; you were undergoing secluded cultivation, weren’t you?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Ji Xun brushed him off half-heartedly. “This is $1 + 1 > 2$.”
Tan Mingjiu didn’t understand, but Huo Ranyin did.
Huo Ranyin’s gaze flicked toward the window outside, a dead giveaway of his thoughts.
Tan Mingjiu turned his face back toward the one-way glass and let out a disgusted snort at Zheng Xuewang inside: “This bastard’s fox tail can’t be hidden anymore! He can gloat for now, but in a few days, we’ll pin him down completely from head to toe!”
“Go find Wang Guiyu first,” Huo Ranyin chimed in, bringing up Zheng Xuewang’s mother. “She is the person closest to Zheng Xuewang and Zheng Xuejun. Her words last time weren’t entirely truthful either. Now that the situation is unfavorable for Zheng Xuewang, if we question her again, perhaps she’ll crack under the pressure.”
“You got it,” Tan Mingjiu replied with a dramatic flourish. “Leave it to me, you can rest easy.”
However, Huo Ranyin hadn’t been speaking to Tan Mingjiu. He coldly pushed Tan Mingjiu aside and said to Ji Xun, “Let’s go together.”
“Mm-hmm,” Ji Xun agreed.
“???” Tan Mingjiu blinked.
“Captain Yuan borrowed some people from me just now. You and Wen Yangyang are to follow Detachment One to investigate Chen Jiashu’s matters. Conveniently, you guys were already looking into this when I was on leave earlier,” Huo Ranyin instructed Tan Mingjiu flatly.
“Alright then…” Tan Mingjiu didn’t really mind; handling any case was still handling a case.
“Where does the investigation into Chen Jiashu’s case stand right now?” Ji Xun interjected.
“They’ve already taken the economic crime investigation team to Chen Jiashu’s company,” Huo Ranyin said. “They’ve sealed and confiscated all the computers and records from Chen Jiashu’s pharmaceutical company, and they are currently auditing them page by page, entry by entry. The forensics department is sampling and analyzing the bloodstains and hair at the scene. The investigation previously conducted into the hospital should also be connecting up by now… With a case of this magnitude, we should still be able to unearth a vast amount of information.”
Indeed, a case of this magnitude.
Ji Xun fell into silent contemplation.
Smuggling, kidnapping, organ trafficking.
Ji Yu’s heart…
Back then, was Ji Yu’s heart purchased from Chen Jiashu’s hands? And who would be the person who surrendered that heart?
What was their height or build, were they young or old, were they male or female?
