The taxi sped away in the direction of the outskirts.
Ji Mingrui did something rare for him—he pulled out a pack of cigarettes, slid one out, and lit it. He intentionally waited for the taxi to get a bit of a head start before shifting into gear and following it.
He kept a buffer of three or four cars between them. It was a textbook distance for tailing someone: completely manageable, yet highly unlikely to be spotted.
But as Ji Mingrui focused on keeping his own tracks hidden, a flurry of questions kept echoing in his mind: What exactly did Chi Qing see in that video?
Inside the taxi.
After finishing his call, Chi Qing spent the entire ride looking down at his black-gloved hands, mentally retracing the few clips of surveillance footage he had just analyzed.
There hadn’t been a single issue with Xie Lin’s car before it entered the underground passage—the mystery lay entirely within the passage itself.
How long had the car driven inside that underground passage? Roughly less than ten seconds.
Though a mere ten seconds was an incredibly tight window, it wasn’t impossible to pull off a premeditated vehicle swap if it was perfectly timed.
When Chi Qing was back in the office reviewing the surveillance for the second time, his focus had been glued to the three or four motorcycles inside the passage. One black-and-red motorcycle had stood out vividly from the rest. The bike boasted aggressively sharp, chiseled lines, its silhouette both lethal and smooth.
The engine had kept up a steady, low rumble.
The rider was bundled up tightly from head to toe, wearing a solid black helmet that completely obscured his face. He wore fingerless gloves, exposing only long, slender knuckles. His middle finger was raised slightly, his fingertip resting lightly on the handbrake lever, poised to shift speeds at a moment’s notice.
That night, while sitting in the back seat, Chi Qing had actually crossed paths with this exact motorcycle.
He had been sitting in the car, eyes cast down as he brooded over something, when a blur of red and black caught the edge of his peripheral vision. By the time he looked up, the motorcycle had already accelerated and shot forward.
Everyone else assumed the person behind the wheel had never been Xie Lin from the very start, but Chi Qing alone suspected that the driver had been swapped mid-route.
The specific segment of surveillance Chi Qing replayed the most was from a location about ten minutes away from the underground passage.
This was because, following the vehicle’s trajectory past the underground passage, the motorcycle had broken through the criminal police’s perimeter without a hitch, driven for over ten minutes, and then bizarrely vanished the moment it exited the next tunnel mouth.
Chi Qing checked it repeatedly, confirming with absolute certainty that the motorcycle had entered the tunnel entrance.
The man had been riding at breakneck speed, weaving seamlessly through the traffic. To maximize his velocity, he constantly changed lanes, dodging potential collisions and overtaking the cars ahead.
Yet, after entering the tunnel, a full three minutes ticked by. Even the cars that had originally been overtaken by the motorcycle emerged from the tunnel exit one by one, but there was still no sign of the motorcycle itself.
…
It was an utterly baffling occurrence.
A vehicle had simply vanished into thin air in broad daylight. In other words, even if someone realized something was off about the motorcycle, there was no way to trace its trajectory.
So… where on earth did the motorcycle go?
Chi Qing had been temporarily stumped by this question back in the office, but his eyes quickly drifted toward a large box truck.
A box truck of that size was more than spacious enough to conceal a motorcycle.
…
Chi Qing slowly closed his eyes.
He tried to visualize the events of that night from the perspective of an outside observer.
After Xie Lin completed the swap with the driver in the underground passage, in order to avoid detection, a box truck had been pre-arranged inside a tunnel seven kilometers away. Calculating the timing down to the second, the moment the motorcycle surged into the tunnel at high speed, the box truck threw open its rear cargo doors.
Clatter—
As the cargo doors swung open, the ramp typically used for loading and unloading cargo lowered to the ground, forming a short incline.
But because the box truck was still actively driving, the ramp scraped along the asphalt the entire time.
Two or three seconds later, the front wheel of the motorcycle lifted. The front half of the bike hung suspended in mid-air, its rear tire screeching against the road for traction as it launched up the lowered ramp and straight into the belly of the box truck.
A sliver of light pierced through from the tunnel exit, growing brighter the closer they got—
And the exact instant the box truck burst out of the tunnel, the cargo doors snapped shut.
Honk honk—
Honk—
The box truck blended seamlessly back into the flow of traffic, driving along the main highway just like any other vehicle, heading straight toward the outer suburbs.
“We’re here.”
The taxi driver slowed down, pulling over near a cluster of deserted factory buildings in the remote outskirts. “Is this the spot?”
Recalling the route the box truck had taken, Chi Qing replied, “This is it.”
Huanan City maintained strict urban regulations that prohibited factories from operating within the city center, meaning these plants and warehouses were almost exclusively located in the far suburbs. This particular area was so far out that driving just two or three more kilometers would land you in an entirely different city.
After stepping out of the car, Chi Qing walked down a muddy country lane. Looking out into the distance, factory buildings of various heights rose in staggered clusters. The residents here were predominantly migrant workers.
Ji Mingrui didn’t dare tail him too closely out of fear of being spotted. Instead, he took a wide detour and parked his car next to a construction materials factory where several vehicles were already stationed outside the entrance.
The elderly security guard at the gate rushed over, wielding a wooden stick like a makeshift baton, and shouted, “You—who are you? What are you parking your car here for?”
Ji Mingrui scanned frantically in Chi Qing’s direction while fishing a cigarette out of his coat pocket to hand to the old man. “I’m here to talk business. I’m looking for your Manager Wu.”
“We don’t have a Manager Wu here.”
“Manager Wang—you misheard me, my Mandarin isn’t great. I’m looking for Manager Wang.”
With two surnames that common, he was bound to hit the mark eventually—a blind cat catching a dead mouse.
The old man accepted the cigarette, his suspicion vanishing. “Oh, so you’re a friend of Manager Wang.”
“Exactly,” Ji Mingrui said, eager to break away. “I have another friend at a different factory nearby. I’m going to check on him first. If Manager Wang asks about me, tell him I’ll be right over and to call my cell.”
The cigarette in the old man’s mouth bobbed up and down as he spoke. “Got it, I’ll let him know. Go ahead…”
The moment the words left the guard’s mouth, Ji Mingrui took off at a sprint!
He left the old man standing there, clicking his tongue in wonder: Was this guy running to see a friend, or desperately rushing to find a restroom?
Ji Mingrui channeled the speed of a hundred-meter dash. He nearly collided with someone halfway through but didn’t even have time to apologize, tracking Chi Qing’s silhouette straight into a factory building.
However, he quickly realized this was a parts manufacturing plant. It was packed with people and chaotic, housing countless separate workshops the moment he stepped inside.
“Where did that guy go?” Ji Mingrui spun around twice in circles, then doubled back a couple of steps to grab the worker he had just bumped into. “The one wearing gloves—which way did he go?”
The factory worker gave him a bizarre look before lifting his hands. “Everyone in this entire place wears gloves. Which one are you talking about?”
“…”
Unbelievable!
He knew Chi Qing wouldn’t just wander in without a plan.
Ji Mingrui stared down the several exits branching out in front of him, entirely at a loss for which path to take.
Chi Qing slipped through the workshop with ease, mapping out the layout of the factory grounds with a swift, calculated sweep of his eyes. While Ji Mingrui might get hopelessly turned around in a dense industrial zone like this—clueless as to why Chi Qing had come here in the first place—Chi Qing knew exactly what he was searching for.
He needed to find that box truck.
What kind of factory would require a box truck? One with shipping and transport needs.
The scope of the search was actually quite narrow. Furthermore, the owner of the box truck would never suspect they would trace them down this quickly.
“Emergency broadcast: This man is suspected of involvement in a malicious homicide case. The suspect currently remains at large, and citizens are urged to actively provide any information…”
Inside a dim, cramped room barely spanning ten square meters, a hand slowly lifted the lid off a cup of instant noodles.
The swirling steam billowed upward, blurring the display of the computer monitor.
The hand wore a slender ring. The ring’s owner sat in front of the computer, watching a re-run of the news broadcast. This particular news segment had been playing on a loop at a fixed time every day since its initial airing.
Tracing upward from the man’s fingers revealed a face identical to the one on the computer screen.
However, his wardrobe had changed entirely. Compared to his sharp, sophisticated ID photo, Xie Lin was dressed much more casually now. He wore a simple, solid-colored sweater featuring a somewhat tacky skull print across the chest, paired with ripped jeans. Judging by the style, these definitely weren’t clothes he would ever buy for himself.
The down-to-earth, slightly outdated aesthetic fit perfectly with this neighborhood. Yet, despite the outfit, Xie Lin’s face alone managed to elevate the clothes, giving off an effortlessly “expensive” vibe.
He nudged the mouse, pausing the news broadcast, and opened his email inbox. His cursor hovered over the inbox folder for two seconds before he abruptly closed every program running on the screen.
Simultaneously, a soft knock sounded from the door.
Knock, knock.
The knocking was exceptionally light. The rhythm was thoroughly ordinary, and a normal person wouldn’t detect anything unusual about it. But Xie Lin instantly froze. His fingers tensed up completely as he stared straight at the door, as though trying to pierce through the wood to see the person standing on the other side.
It wasn’t until the knocking ceased and a strange, heavy silence settled over the room that Xie Lin abruptly stood up from his chair and shoved open the back door—and almost at that exact millisecond, the front door was violently smashed open by a heavy object from the outside.
Chi Qing stood there holding a tool resembling an iron spade. With one precise strike against the doorknob, he shattered the lock. He tossed the tool aside, slapped the dust off his gloves, and finally raised his eyes to survey the room.
The layout was bare-bones, entirely visible in a single glance. There were very few items: a makeshift cot, a wooden desk scattered with miscellaneous clutter, and the computer sitting on the desk, which served as the room’s sole electronic appliance. This was likely the occupant’s only lifeline to the outside world.
Chi Qing had never anticipated that he and Xie Lin would have another physical showdown like they did during their very first encounter with the cat killer case. Ever since they confessed their feelings and got together, their “fighting” locations had been strictly confined to the bed.
The factory lanes were littered with debris, including plenty of discarded tools left carelessly by the roadside. Chi Qing had picked out a sleek, lightweight silver rod to carry. In his grip, the rod looked remarkably like the handle of an umbrella after the fabric and canopy frame had been stripped away.
However, the rod didn’t serve the purpose it was meant for. He pursued Xie Lin all the way into a cluttered storage room. After deflecting two strikes, Xie Lin nimbly vaulted over a utility shelf. The moment he cleared it, the shelf collapsed with a resounding crash, sealing Chi Qing behind a wall of debris.
Xie Lin was a man who could orchestrate a vehicle swap down to the exact second. Since he had chosen this place as his hideout, he had undoubtedly mapped out an escape route in the event he was compromised.
Tucked inside the storage room was a freight elevator. The elevator ran downward, leading straight to the underground level.
By the time Chi Qing pushed aside the fallen shelf, ignoring the dirt smudging his clothes as he lunged toward the elevator, the doors had already slid mostly shut.
Through the narrowing gap, he caught a glimpse of Xie Lin’s face.
With only two seconds remaining before the doors sealed completely, Chi Qing breathed heavily, the fine hairs on his forehead damp with sweat. He looked downright disheveled in this moment, yet he made no move to reach out and jam the descending elevator doors open.
He hadn’t chased Xie Lin all the way here just to corner him.
Right then, a flurry of hurried footsteps echoed from the corridor behind him. The newcomer was likely Ji Mingrui.
In that heart-stopping final second before the doors sealed entirely, Chi Qing didn’t make a single move. He simply stood his ground and spoke into the closing gap: “I believe you.”
“No matter what happens, I will always believe you.”
