This felt far too bizarre. As an atheist, Chi Qing was even beginning to believe whether there really was something predestined in the world, some intangible, wondrous guidance that had descended upon him and Xie Lin, like the fleeting moment a shooting star streaks across the sky.
At the time, no one knew what kind of place they were locked up in.
These children were all renowned figures in their schools. They excelled academically, grew up surrounded by flowers and applause, and possessed immeasurable prospects and futures.
The corridor was long and deep, pitch-black with no end in sight.
The sound of footsteps moved away from the door of Chi Qing’s room, growing fainter as they went, before finally coming to a halt in front of a certain door.
Then, suddenly, everyone heard a loud clatter—the sound of an iron door being pulled open. The person bent down and reached inside, smiling at the child who was curled up in the corner, desperately covering their own mouth as they retreated: “Found you.”
Logically speaking, they had no idea what anyone else looked like, except for the people locked in the same room as them.
But Chi Qing would always remember one.
Because after another piercing scream, the child was dragged out by their feet, their upper body and entire face scraping against the concrete floor. As they were dragged down that long, long path, they babbled in utter desperation during the ordeal: “Let me go… help, help me!”
Through the crack in the door, Chi Qing saw the face of the child being dragged away.
Ten years ago, Chi Qing was not as tall as his peers; he looked very thin and frail, and he had an overly beautiful, innocent face.
The boy sharing the room with him at the time wore glasses and had a mole on his face.
Seeing this scene, his roommate almost couldn’t contain himself. Chi Qing said in a low voice, “Shut up.”
“Don’t make a sound.”
The child was dragged all the way out, their screams gradually turning agonizing: “Ah—!”
That child died.
The man seemed to have a bit of a headache as he muttered, “What a hassle. We’re short one person.”
Chi Qing was retrieving and storing information in his mind at that moment.
He said they were short one person.
So there was a reason he put two people in one room. It had to be two people; being short even one wouldn’t do.
Why did he make such an arrangement?
What did he want to do?
That Chi Qing could still distract himself to ponder these things under such circumstances was incredible, though he couldn’t come up with an answer for the time being.
The glasses-wearing roommate beside him was on the verge of a breakdown. Chi Qing suddenly spoke up and asked him, “Are you okay?”
Glasses gasped out a hiccup from fright: “N… No.”
Chi Qing changed the subject: “Which school are you from?”
“I’m from Hengye Middle School.”
Chi Qing thought about it and casually offered a compliment: “Your school is pretty good.”
“…Thank you.”
Chi Qing said, “Don’t be afraid. He kidnapped so many people, and they’re all minors. The outside world must be in complete chaos. The police will find this place very soon.”
These words brought some comfort to Glasses, who said softly, “You’re really nice.”
Chi Qing used practical action to tell him he was overthinking it: “Oh, I just haven’t figured out the rules yet. I’m not sure if, after you get dragged out and this room is left with only one person, I’ll be disposed of too.”
Glasses: “……”
Chi Qing later chatted casually with Glasses, attempting to find a pattern from their kidnapping experiences, knowing that figuring out why the killer chose them would bring him closer to the man’s true purpose.
A person couldn’t possibly do something without a purpose.
He disliked this feeling of being passive.
That day, Glasses happened to be on his way to an advanced mathematics tutoring class. On the way there, he had snuck into an arcade to play games for a while. To him, going to the arcade was a forbidden activity. He had lied to his parents, claiming he had left his workbook at a classmate’s house and had agreed to go pick it up, which was how he managed to get permission to leave the house half an hour early.
However, at the time, he did not know what sneaking into the arcade would entail.
Recalling up to this point, Chi Qing blinked, looked up, and asked Xie Lin, “What about you? How were you kidnapped?”
The silhouette of Xie Lin’s face was indistinguishable in the darkness.
His gaze seemed very deep, his light-colored pupils dyed black by the night.
The man’s well-defined fingers rested against Chi Qing’s forehead. He moved his fingers slightly and then said, “I wasn’t kidnapped.”
A rare flicker of expression appeared on Chi Qing’s always calm and unbothered face: “What?”
Xie Lin lowered his head, speaking about that kidnapping case with someone for the very first time. He looked into Chi Qing’s eyes and uttered a shocking statement: “I went in on my own. I wanted to catch him at the time.”
Chi Qing had been captured very early on, so he had no idea what was happening in the outside world. He could guess that the police would urgently form a task force to investigate with all their might, but he could never have guessed how utterly powerless the police were against that killer at the time.
“Ten years ago, surveillance technology, citizen databases, fingerprint registries… these things weren’t as sophisticated as they are now. Moreover, after the killer abducted those children, it was as if he vanished off the face of the earth. He didn’t contact the children’s parents, nor did he contact the police.”
Xie Lin continued, “This point was very strange. Because the killer creating such a sensational serial kidnapping case indicated that he had an arrogant personality that desperately craved ‘exposure.’ This is also a common trait among many criminals—they cover up their crimes, yet they want their crimes to cause a sensation because to them, it’s a form of ‘eulogy.’ But he didn’t. After he grabbed the people, there was no news at all.”
Ten years ago at the General Headquarters, there were no large screens in the meeting rooms. They used old-fashioned projectors and a simple whiteboard.
The highest-ranking officials of the entire police force gathered together. After countless depressing, grim, and heavy meetings, they still hadn’t found any trace of this killer.
Xie Lin was brought into the meeting room on the third day after the case occurred.
After reviewing the detailed information of the case, the youth “consultant” wearing a school uniform said, “He isn’t looking for us, so we can look for him—to be precise, I can find him.”
The Chief was greatly shocked: “How will you find him?”
The young Xie Lin looked down at the files before him. The files obscured the real names of all the victims, but faithfully recorded the characteristics of each victim and how they were kidnapped. The youth said nonchalantly, “Because I meet his requirements. I satisfy all the common characteristics shared by these victims. Moreover, I am the younger brother of Xie Feng, the person in charge of this case.”
Sitting across the long table, Xie Feng of ten years ago scolded, “Nonsense!”
The charm in the young Xie Lin’s brow and eyes was already beginning to show. He leaned back and raised an eyebrow, saying, “I want to try. I am the only way to get close to him.”
Back then, Xie Lin viewed this case as a challenge.
A dangerous challenge that sparked his curiosity.
And the General Headquarters, facing immense pressure, executed this secret plan using a minor as bait.
The next day, a special interview titled “Stepping into the World of Youth Xie Lin” was published in the Huanan City News Weekly.
And everything happened to be just right—
Because that person was “short one person,” he had no choice but to brave the trouble and danger to go out again to search for a new prey.
On a bustling morning, street-side newsstands were still in their glory days back then. In an era when the internet wasn’t so developed, many people passing by a newsstand before work while carrying breakfast would buy a fashion magazine or a stack of newspapers.
People came and went in front of the newsstand. The newsstand owner was busy making change for customers and didn’t notice a pair of hands in the crowd picking up a newspaper. Then, without making eye contact with him, that person placed the banknotes that had been tucked between their fingers beforehand onto the stall, took the stack of newspapers, and walked away.
For the next few days, Xie Lin went to school, came home, and went to the General Headquarters just like usual.
Everyone was deployed around Xie Lin, waiting for the killer to take the bait.
Every night, when Xie Lin closed his eyes, he didn’t know if there was someone hidden in the pitch-black room, or if a pair of eyes was staring at him from inside the wardrobe. When he went out during the day, he didn’t know when he would encounter an accident either.
Anyone would have some emotional issues under such circumstances, but Xie Lin didn’t.
The criminal police lurking around Xie Lin watched him act no different from usual, continuing to smile and interact with his classmates and frequenting the teachers’ offices. He was popular, always surrounded by a group of classmates, but if one looked closely, his relationship with these people wasn’t actually that close.
Hearing this, Chi Qing asked, “Why did the operation fail?”
If the operation had succeeded, Xie Lin wouldn’t have actually been captured, and the killer’s atrocities wouldn’t have continued.
So… the operation back then must have failed.
Xie Lin’s gaze pierced through the thick night, recalling police cars appearing before his eyes one after another, sirens blaring continuously. The gates of a certain junior high school were sealed off by the police, and a teacher was frantically saying, “He is the top student in our grade, a very good child. He has been missing for 12 hours—”
The teacher was almost crying while speaking: “Please, save him. Something must have happened to him. Was he kidnapped?”
“The killer hasn’t been caught yet, he’s still capturing these children… something must have happened to him.”
“At the time, everyone thought the killer had changed targets,” Xie Lin said. “Just as all police attention shifted to the other child, he appeared.”
There was usually no one at the young Xie Lin’s home. His parents were doing business away from home, and the nanny would leave on her own after cleaning up. Xie Feng was busy with missions every day and was barely home. That day, after arriving home, he stood in the kitchen drinking water. Facing the countertop, he saw through the reflection on the glass cover of the range hood that a dark shadow had appeared behind him at some unknown point.
That dark shadow was reflected on it, eerie and blurry.
The young Xie Lin held the water cup between his fingers and didn’t even turn his head as he said, “You’re here.”
He was still wearing his school uniform, showing no trace of panic: “…So it was a diversion.”
But he was too young back then. Until that very moment, he didn’t think there was any danger, completely exposing the arrogance embedded in his bones and his near-manic desire to contact crime.
Even if he really got caught, it was better than this person never showing his hand.
Being caught wasn’t necessarily a dead end; he still had a chance to escape.
At that time, he had no idea that this case, as well as this person’s purpose for capturing so many children, was far more dangerous than he had imagined.
When Xie Lin spoke up to this point, Chi Qing gained some recollection.
At the time, he paid great attention to that “single room.” Within this neatly ordered “double room” rule, he couldn’t find any clues; only that “single room” was filled with unexpected variables. He would pay attention to the movements in the single room every day.
After being locked up for a week, he rarely heard a set of footsteps in the deathly silent corridor.
With a clatter, the entrance door was pulled open by someone.
Even though a week had passed, Chi Qing had been calculating the time, so he knew it should be past 12 o’clock at night right now.
Sure enough, after the door was pulled open, not a single ray of light shone in from the doorway.
The corridor seemed even darker than usual.
Then, someone walked in.
It wasn’t “that person’s” footsteps.
Or rather, it wasn’t just that person.
Walking ahead of that person was another individual.
“Walk faster,” that person’s hoarse voice urged.
“What’s the rush?” Chi Qing heard a slightly lazy voice answer him, one that was currently going through puberty. “It wasn’t easy for you to find such a place either; I have to take a proper look around.”
Chi Qing couldn’t see the situation outside, but he could imagine a person walking along the pitch-black corridor. Judging by the voice, the person’s age should not be much different from his own—still a student. Yet, like a tourist, he walked unhurriedly through this deep corridor that struck fear into everyone else.
Even though the two individuals didn’t meet face-to-face and didn’t know each other, that was perhaps their very first encounter.
