“Where the hell is he—?! Did he go down?!”
Ji Mingrui was a step too late. By the time he dashed over to the elevator, the doors had already sealed completely. The red digital display slowly ticked down from 1 to B1. No matter how frantically he mashed the elevator button, it was useless.
In the end, Ji Mingrui balled his hand into a fist and slammed it hard against the elevator door.
“Did you see him?”
“What did he say? Why didn’t you catch him?!”
“—Where is he?!”
Chi Qing didn’t answer. He slipped off his thoroughly dirtied black gloves, completely unsurprised by Ji Mingrui’s sudden appearance. He simply stated the facts in a calm voice: “He’s gone.”
After a pause, Chi Qing added, “I spotted your car less than three minutes after leaving the police station. Where did you park it? Drive me back.”
Ji Mingrui: “……”
This guy really didn’t mince words.
Ji Mingrui was pushing back his frustration. He had gone through all this trouble with a single objective in mind: to find a way to bring Xie Lin in. He didn’t know if Chi Qing and Xie Lin had actually crossed paths, what they had said if they did, or if Chi Qing might have slipped him some kind of assistance.
In other words, what role exactly was Chi Qing playing in this case?
“Drive you back my foot,” Ji Mingrui snapped. “I need to process the scene first.”
Ji Mingrui dialed his team, snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, and stepped back into the cramped room. But after a cursory search, he failed to find anything incriminating—save for the computer sitting on the desk.
Ji Mingrui stared at the machine, intending to confiscate it, but Chi Qing, who had been waiting at the threshold, spoke up: “There’s no point.”
“He wouldn’t leave a browsing history behind. But if you’ve got nothing better to do, feel free to take it.”
Ji Mingrui still hauled the heavy computer into his car with considerable effort.
As he slammed the backseat door shut, Ji Mingrui looked at Chi Qing and said, “You need to come back to the station with me, too.”
Chi Qing pulled open the passenger door. “The office surveillance couldn’t capture me; I only sat at your desk for a moment, and I didn’t leave any fingerprints behind. Even so, are you certain you have the legal grounds to bring me in?”
Chi Qing had carefully calculated the blind spots of the camera when he looked at the computer; it hadn’t caught a glimpse of him.
Ji Mingrui was entirely tongue-tied. This couple really possessed a frightening talent for bending and breaking the law.
At the same time, he knew he wasn’t going to pry any real answers out of Chi Qing today. After all this frantic rushing around, his only harvest was adding a few more pages to an already outrageously thick case file.
But official protocols still had to be followed.
With his hands stuffed inside his coat pockets, Chi Qing calmly laid out his hypothesis regarding the vehicle swap inside the underground passage. Ji Mingrui instantly grasped Chi Qing’s line of reasoning from reviewing the surveillance: “So that motorcycle—”
Once the statement was wrapped up, Ji Mingrui closed his notebook. As he escorted Chi Qing out to the entrance, he asked a question strictly as a friend: “Do you really think… Xie Lin committed the murder?”
Chi Qing was in the middle of pulling his mask back up. His hand paused briefly at the question, waiting until the rideshare vehicle he had called rounded the corner and pulled up before he offered a reply: “There’s evidence. What do you think?”
“……”
There’s evidence. Wasn’t that just a piece of useless filler text?
Ji Mingrui knew Chi Qing wasn’t the type to waste words on nonsense. He chewed on the phrase, turning it over in his mind several times, before suddenly freezing in his tracks.
By then, Chi Qing had already slid into the car. The weather had been miserable lately, plagued by a relentless, depressing drizzle.
The driver rubbed his arms, thinking to himself that on such a gloomy day, he had picked up an equally eerie passenger. Before getting in, this customer had even used a tissue to wrap around the door handle just to open it—his behavior was eccentric to say the least.
Chi Qing rested his head against the back seat, his eyes half-closed.
He was retracing that brief glimpse of Xie Lin. He looked like he had lost weight. The style of the clothes he was wearing didn’t suit him at all; who knew where he had bought them.
How has he been lately?
…
Chi Qing’s mind spun continuously, but his final thought settled on this: In that exact second, he was looking back at me, too.
The phrase “there’s evidence” that Chi Qing had left behind before departing was the key.
Chi Qing’s mind brainstormed through the case. There were far too many anomalies, the most glaring of which was—if Xie Lin truly intended to kill someone, he would never leave behind such incredibly clumsy traces. The crime scene practically screamed out to the world: I am the killer.
In the vast majority of homicides, suspects painstakingly staged the crime scene, exerting every effort to disguise a murder as a suicide to evade the hammer of justice. Virtually no one did the exact opposite, deliberately fabricating evidence to violently warp a clear-cut suicide into a homicide.
The entirety of Huanan City knew Xie Lin was a wanted fugitive, hunted down and forced to skulk in the shadows.
…Why would he do this?
If he wasn’t the killer, why go to such lengths? What was his motive, and what was his ultimate objective?
As Chi Qing was deep in thought right before pulling up to his destination, the driver’s phone rang.
Through the dimming twilight, a small crystal keychain hanging from the rearview mirror—a photo of the driver and his young daughter—swayed back and forth with the motion of the brakes. The ringtone was a familiar children’s nursery rhyme: “Look, look, look for a friend, find a good friend~~ Hiccup~”
Unlike the haunting version found on the cassette tape retrieved from the victim at the church, this rendition of “Looking for a Friend” was bursting with innocent, childlike charm. The little girl sang in a sweet, babyish voice, ending it with a tiny, satisfied hiccup that would make anyone crack a smile.
Anyone, except Chi Qing.
“Look, look, look for a friend~~”
“Find a good friend, you are my best friend~~~”
The driver picked up the call, exchanging a few tender words: “Alright, Daddy knows,” “Daddy will bring it home for you tonight, but you can’t eat too much of it, okay?” before hanging up. He turned back to flash Chi Qing an apologetic smile, explaining, “That was my daughter. She sang that ringtone herself. It was the very first nursery rhyme her kindergarten teacher taught them, and she memorized it instantly…”
Chi Qing: “This is your private phone. There is no need to explain your life to me.”
Driver: “……”
Chi Qing paid the fare and prepared to step out, pausing slightly as he held the car door. “…But thank you anyway.”
He left the driver sitting in the car with a face full of confusion. Thank me? Thank me for what?
Chi Qing didn’t head straight home. He doubled back, but his destination wasn’t the local precinct—it was the bureau headquarters.
The scent of the burning incense remained unchanged.
The Chief sat behind his desk, looking at the man standing across from him. For a fleeting moment, it felt like a replay of a few days ago, when that very same man had knocked on his door, walked in, and demanded the case files.
“I won’t beat around the bush with you,” Chi Qing said. It was already past working hours, leaving the bureau headquarters exceptionally quiet. Because he had removed his gloves, he leaned his weight slightly back against the chair, slipping his hands into his jacket pockets. “I’ve pretty much deduced your plan.”
The Chief smiled faintly, pushing a teacup toward Chi Qing. “I’m not entirely certain I follow what you’re saying.”
“What plan?” the Chief inquired gently.
Chi Qing didn’t touch the tea. His bottomless, dark pupils locked onto the Chief’s smiling eyes. “Xie Lin didn’t kill anyone.”
Chi Qing continued on his own terms: “Guo Xingchang committed suicide.”
“Whether he killed him or not,” the Chief countered, “is a matter for the law and the judge to decide. Your word alone doesn’t carry weight.”
Chi Qing completely ignored the Chief’s deflection, choosing instead to state: “I’ve been pondering a single question: Xie Feng has been dead for ten years. Who exactly was the person who revealed to Xie Lin that Guo Xingchang was tied to Xie Feng’s death? This clue might have been fed to Xie Lin through the 13th floor by ‘that person,’ or perhaps through some other channel. But the channel itself is irrelevant. What matters is that he revealed it to Xie Lin with a specific intent.”
Chi Qing paused briefly. “His goal was simple: he wanted Xie Lin to murder Guo Xingchang.”
That person had instigated far too many people. Judging by his past patterns, every single one of his actions pointed toward a single objective—inducing criminal behavior.
—“Hello there, I have a secret I’d like to share with you.”
—“Even though ten years have slipped away… do you truly possess the innocence to believe your brother’s death was merely an accident?”
The death of a cherished loved one was no accident; someone else had brought about his demise.
Don’t you harbor hatred for him?
Don’t you want him to pay with his life?
And executing a life-for-a-life scenario was a walk in the park for someone like Xie Lin. Through countless past cases, while standing in the shoes of murderers to reconstruct their crimes, Xie Lin had already “killed” plenty of people in his mind.
The Chief tapped his fingers lightly against the desktop. “Oh? That’s quite peculiar. Why would he want Xie Lin to kill Guo Xingchang?”
In response, Chi Qing retrieved his phone, tapping the audio player a few times to pull up the “Looking for a Friend” nursery rhyme. The innocent, pure voice resonated through the quiet office.
“Because he is looking for a friend.”
Chi Qing elaborated, “The friend he wants to find… is Xie Lin, isn’t it?”
“Xie Lin did indeed go to find Guo Xingchang that night, but my guess is that by the time he arrived, Guo Xingchang had already ended his own life. I met with Guo Xingchang once; his psychological state was completely fractured. For all these years, he was trapped in the agonizing spiral of losing his son and the sins he committed in his youth. Confronted with Guo Xingchang’s corpse, you and Xie Lin decided to seize this golden opportunity to play right into ‘that person’s’ hands. If you want to draw him out, becoming his friend is the fastest route.”
Since he wanted Xie Lin to become a killer, Xie Lin would “kill” a man for him to see.
A city-wide dragnet, wall-to-wall news coverage, the criminal investigation team working around the clock… Xie Lin’s identity as a normal citizen was systematically erased beneath the sun.
“That’s why that rented room was completely barren, yet housed a functional computer,” Chi Qing drove his deduction home. “He has an absolute mission to maintain communication with the outside world, and his contact is ‘that person.’ He needs to close the distance and become his friend. Furthermore, he couldn’t possibly pull this off entirely on his own. If there’s another insider aware of this operation, I can’t think of anyone else besides you, Chief.”
The Chief stared at Chi Qing for a long beat.
Only then did he reach up to tap the Bluetooth earpiece resting in his right ear. Simultaneously, the screen of the phone on his desk lit up, revealing that he had been on an active call this entire time. He spoke directly to the person on the other end of the line: “I admit defeat. You were right—this friend of yours is truly not an easy one to fool.”
“But you didn’t win either. He traced his way here far quicker than you anticipated.”
The call interface displayed a completely pitch-black avatar for the recipient. After the Chief finished speaking, the person on the other end murmured something brief, and the call abruptly disconnected.
Chi Qing demanded, “What did he say?”
The Chief looked at him with a complex expression, speaking slowly: “He said… you aren’t a friend. You’re family.”
On the other end of the line, the owner of the black avatar sat quietly on his wooden chair for a long moment after terminating the call.
The man remained ensconced within the cramped, dimly lit room. The lighting was poor, the contents sparse, and the computer still glowed before him.
Two programs were currently running on the monitor. One was the police force’s tracking system. A total of three separate task forces were deployed to hunt down his whereabouts, and he could monitor the precise operational trajectories of all three units through this tracking system—a special clearance granted to him by the Chief to ensure he wouldn’t be accidentally captured.
If any team drew too close to his current hideout, he would have ample time to prepare a retreat.
But he couldn’t guard against an outside variable who defied all logic and initiated a private investigation entirely on his own.
For instance… his dear family member.
Xie Lin twirled the slender ring resting between his fingers, replaying the sound of Chi Qing’s voice from the phone call just now. Truth be told, he hadn’t listened closely to the actual words Chi Qing had spoken; he merely wanted to hear the cadence of his voice, to lock that precious sound securely inside his mind.
Beep beep.
The computer in front of him chimed softly.
It came from the other active program on his screen. It was an encrypted social messaging software. Xie Lin was still utilizing the account handle “L,” the very same one he had used while investigating the Shen Xinghe case. Coincidentally, the account sending him a message also consisted of a single letter: “Z.”
Z—the absolute final letter of the twenty-six English characters.
Z: How is it going?
Z: Are the police still hunting you down?
The two had already established a steady stream of dialogue, lending a sense of familiarity to today’s opening query.
Xie Lin casually tapped a single word out on his keyboard: Yes.
Z: Are you afraid?
Z: To be honest, I thought you would use a much more sophisticated method to dispose of Guo Xingchang.
Z: There are so many agonizing ways to make a person suffer, yet you opted for this one.
The person on the other end discussed the topic of taking a human life with chilling nonchalance.
L: As long as he’s dead, it’s sufficient.
L: I didn’t want to get my hands dirty.
A response flashed across the screen almost instantly.
Z: Is that so?
Z: Then I am quite different from you. I cannot stand it when a person perishes silently beneath my hands. I must feel their agony, their desperate struggles, and listen to them beg for mercy, imploring me to spare their life. But I never let go.
Z: But it doesn’t matter.
The computer screen cast an eerie, shimmering glow across the dim, cramped space.
Z: I accept that our methods differ slightly. After all…
Z: We are friends.
