Ji Mingrui couldn’t easily look for Chi Qing; it wasn’t right from any perspective, emotionally or rationally. Others might only have a vague understanding of the relationship between Chi Qing and Xie Lin, but Ji Mingrui knew it all too well.
Who was Xie Lin? This man, who had allegedly violated criminal law right after his birthday and was currently evading arrest, was the friend of his best buddy.
Chi Qing was the only person likely to find Xie Lin, but it wasn’t convenient for him to get involved in this case—at least, not if they wanted to follow official procedures.
Ji Mingrui sat in front of the computer. He had already watched all the road surveillance footage related to Xie Lin’s car that day countless times. Watching this surveillance could be said to offer absolutely no clues. Every time he watched the footage, he was directly confronted with the gap between an ordinary person and a genius. In an era where the crime clearance rate was extremely high and roads were so heavily monitored that blind spots were nearly impossible, he had actually managed to vanish into thin air. And he had done so right under everyone’s noses.
The next day, having still found nothing after going through the surveillance again, Ji Mingrui fell into deep thought for a long time. Finally, he picked up his phone, opened his contacts, and paused on the name “Chi Qing” for a few seconds. With Xie Lin gone, besides the police, the person who wanted to find him the most was Chi Qing. Having known Chi Qing for so many years, he understood him all too well. But if Chi Qing wanted to find Xie Lin without the road surveillance provided by the police, it would be very difficult for him to investigate privately.
What if… an opportunity to look at the surveillance was placed right in front of Chi Qing? Would he look?
Ji Mingrui’s mind raced. Just as he was hesitating whether to press the call button, his phone screen flashed, switching to the incoming call interface. The caller ID strikingly displayed: Chi Qing.
“…?”
The caller ID kept flashing. Accept or decline?
“Hello?” Ji Mingrui cleared his throat, pretending nothing was wrong, and said with a chuckle, “I was just about to call you. My mom bought an oven and has been messing around with a lot of baked goods these past couple of days. She asked you to drop by when you’re free.”
Ji Mingrui knew he had an ulterior motive. This was the first time he had ever used such a rare little scheme on his friend. As he spoke, his hand couldn’t help but flip through a book beside him, turning the pages back and forth aimlessly, as if this could dispel some of his panic and make his voice sound more natural.
After he finished speaking, there was a two-second silence on the other end.
Then, a cold voice said, “Sure.”
“When?” the voice asked again, so cold it was almost impossible to detect any warmth.
“Tonight then,” Ji Mingrui replied.
Chi Qing’s voice was very distinctive, like freezing rainwater: “Then I’ll come over to find you.”
Ji Mingrui felt the weight in his heart lift, but a breath remained inexplicably caught in his throat. He dragged the road surveillance files out of the folder and onto the computer desktop. After hanging out with Xie Lin and Chi Qing—two people who never played by the rules—his approach to solving cases had also expanded. He was merely putting the surveillance on the desktop, that’s all. Did he show it to Chi Qing? No. If Chi Qing happened to watch it while he wasn’t around… then what did that have to do with him?
When Chi Qing arrived, it was during the busiest rush right before the police station closed, and everyone was running around in circles. Chi Qing wore a black hoodie, jeans wrapping tightly around his legs, and a pair of black boots on his feet, making him look exceptionally lean. On top of that, because he had gone out with Jiang Yu into the rainy night to chase the car and had caught a bit of a cold from the wind, he wore a mask when he went out. His overly long bangs hung straight down, barely a fraction away from touching the edge of the mask. The only feature on his entire face that could be seen clearly was the man’s exceptionally sharp nose bridge—so prominent that even the mask couldn’t hide it.
Chi Qing pushed open the glass door of the police station office. Just like his first day here, he exuded an aura of impatience. He curled up on the sofa and played on his phone for a while, then asked Ji Mingrui, “How much longer do you have?”
Ji Mingrui packed up the documents, getting up as he said, “Almost done, almost done. As soon as I deliver this stack of reports to Brother Bin at the bureau headquarters, I can off work.”
Chi Qing lifted his eyelids: “Reports?”
Ji Mingrui: “Just the reports regarding the road surveillance. My eyes have gone blurry from watching it over the last couple of days. I won’t say more, if I’m any later, Brother Bin will have off work.”
After Ji Mingrui left, only Jiang Yu remained in the entire office, buried in processing data. Jiang Yu was scribbling furiously when he was suddenly patted on the shoulder from behind. He turned around and asked, “Assistant Chi? What’s wrong?”
Chi Qing casually picked up a stack of documents from Ji Mingrui’s desk and said, “Ji Mingrui said he left a document behind and wants you to help him deliver it.”
Nothing was written on the file envelope, making it impossible to tell what kind of document was inside. However, considering Ji Mingrui’s heavy workload lately and his naturally careless personality, it wasn’t impossible for him to leave something behind.
“He just left not long ago. If you go now, you can still catch him.”
Jiang Yu never even entertained the thought that Chi Qing would lie to him. Thus, pure and kind-hearted as he was, he immediately dropped his current work, took the document, and rushed out.
Once everyone else had left the office, Chi Qing’s black-gloved hand rested on the doorknob. With a click, the door locked. Then, he looked up at the surveillance camera in the office, its little red dot resembling an eye staring down at him.
Click. The crisp sound of a mouse click echoed through the empty office.
The hand gripping the mouse was wearing a black glove. The hand tapped the left mouse button once and then released it. Chi Qing had just been dragging the progress bar of the surveillance video. He dragged the bar forward based on the time, directly and cleanly skipping to a specific timestamp. The screen flickered with a few blurry, disjointed fragments before coming to a stop at a certain intersection.
This intersection didn’t look like anything special, but after a car drove past it, it would enter a pitch-black underground passage. Vehicles had to drive straight ahead for two or three kilometers before they could see daylight again. The dark entrance of the underground passage extended forward into two black lines. The parallel black lines formed by these two tunnels overlapped perfectly with the two parallel black lines he had drawn with a black pen the night before.
Time elapsed much faster in the surveillance video than in reality, its gray tones acting like a filter. Playing at 5x speed, every car in the video looked like it had an accelerator turned on, whizzing back and forth at high speed. About a dozen seconds later, Xie Lin’s black private car appeared on screen. At that exact moment, Chi Qing clicked the left mouse button again to cancel the fast-forward.
Meanwhile, Jiang Yu finally caught up to Ji Mingrui before reaching the bureau headquarters.
“The stuff you left behind,” Jiang Yu said as he pulled his car over by the curb, gripping Ji Mingrui’s car window and passing the file envelope through the gap. “How are you still so scatterbrained? If Brother Bin finds out about this, you’re going to catch hell.”
Ji Mingrui took the file envelope, completely unsurprised. Then, he scratched the back of his head with his other hand and grinned, “Whatever you do, don’t tell Brother Bin.”
Sitting in his car, Ji Mingrui watched Jiang Yu’s car turn the corner at the intersection, then tossed the file envelope onto the passenger seat and drove in the opposite direction of the bureau headquarters. He ended up driving back to the police station, but parked in a very discreet spot. His car was tucked right into the entrance of the alley opposite the station. From his angle, he could see everyone coming and going from the station, but looking out from the station’s entrance toward the alley, he was completely invisible.
Ji Mingrui sat quietly in his car and waited. He glanced at the watch on his wrist, telling himself that Chi Qing would definitely walk out of the police station entrance not long after Jiang Yu rushed back.
Once he came out… where would Chi Qing go after seeing the surveillance?
“Driver,” Chi Qing said as he reached up to adjust his mask, covering his face even more tightly. After getting into the car, he added, “Just drive according to the GPS navigation.”
The driver, a local, enthusiastically stepped on the gas. “You got it!” He glanced down at the navigation again. “Not many people go to this place. It’s pretty out of the way. Do you live there?”
Chi Qing glanced at the rearview mirror through the car window, then subtly shifted his gaze away. Only after a long pause did he say, “…No.”
“I’m going to look for someone.”
