Throughout the entire night, the clues recovered from Lu Song weren’t limited to just the few medicine bottles the vice-captain held, which he had flushed down the toilet. They had simultaneously confiscated the computer and phone Lu Song carried with him. Inside the computer, the technical department found traces of Lu Song logging into the dark web, as well as evidence of him posting anonymously on a certain forum.
The police were not unfamiliar with the dark web. Even though Lu Song had tried to cover his tracks by clearing his browsing history, he hadn’t formatted the drive to overwrite it, so naturally, traces were left in his electronic devices.
Now, this thread was printed out and presented before everyone.
Anonymous User
[Help] Is there any way to discreetly bump off a woman you aren’t very familiar with without anyone knowing?
1L Anonymous User
That’s easy, just hire someone to kill her for you. Want me to introduce someone?
2L Anonymous User
You stalk her and slip some slow-acting poison into her food or drinks. Heavy metals like thallium, lead, polonium are all fine. She’ll be gone before long.
3L Anonymous User
Hey, he said they aren’t familiar, so how can he continuously poison her? Obviously not feasible. If you really want to poison her, you might as well anonymously mail some anthrax. Once she opens it without her guard up, it’s game over.
4L Anonymous User
What era is this? You guys underestimate the police way too much. If you ask me, it’s too hard to kill someone without leaving a trace. It’s better to kidnap her, rape her ten or twenty times, and take some explicit videos. Women, you know, they definitely won’t dare call the police over this kind of stuff. By then, won’t you be able to do whatever you want? What’s the fun in killing? Listen to your bro, you can even get a good thrill out of it.
5L Anonymous User
Can provide proxy rape services [smirk]
6L Anonymous User
Don’t use common poisons. Get some imported drugs from places like Mexico. Stuff like Nuolaishu; after taking it, they just fall asleep and die of heart failure. It looks exactly like a natural sudden death. You can try it.
7L Anonymous User
DM me to buy meds, remember to add a note.
8L Anonymous User
I’m the OP. How should I put this, it’s a bit easier to operate if she’s dead. Her not dying is fine too, I just want her to spit out the money she swallowed.
9L Anonymous User
You want money? Then sell her. Those rich folks are so short on organs right now, people in Nepal are being sold like crazy. Find an excuse to take her to Southeast Asia; you won’t even have to do anything, someone might just take a fancy to her.
10L Anonymous User
Noobs shouldn’t think about committing the perfect crime on their first try. Just honestly pay up and hire someone. I’ve seen too many guys like you; in real life, you can only mess around with PUA for practice.
11L Anonymous User
Then how do I hire someone?
12L Anonymous User
That’s easy, find a place that takes orders—oh, watch out for scammers [hehe]. There’s a bunch of scammers out there, 99% chance you’ll lose both the money and the person.
13L Anonymous User
You rarely run into black-hearted sellers when buying meds. Highly recommend buying meds, you can DM me.
…
21L Anonymous User
Thanks bros, it’s handled.
The moment the poison bottles and the anonymous thread appeared, even before the interrogation began, the police officers on duty felt the case was clear and the evidence solid, just waiting to pry open the suspect’s mouth.
But to everyone’s surprise, facing the evidence, Lu Song appeared perfectly composed and said calmly: “That’s right, I admit I posted this thread, and I also admit I bought quite a few poisons through the dark web. But at most, this counts as smuggling, right? Because I didn’t take them out to cause public panic, the crime of endangering public safety doesn’t even apply, right? As for the deceased—”
When he said the word “deceased”, the interrogating officer and the vice-captain exchanged a glance.
“I saw the deceased tied up with iron chains in a container and dragged into the sea, so the deceased either died of suffocation or drowned in the seawater. No matter how you look at it, it has absolutely nothing to do with the poison I bought, right?”
“Who is the deceased?” the police asked.
“Luo Sui,” Lu Song replied.
“Why did you want to kill her?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“We are asking, why did you want to kill her!” the vice-captain roared angrily.
“She was a mistress. It’s perfectly normal for people to despise a mistress, isn’t it?” Lu Song said. “The whole nation hates mistresses, right? Anyway, I wasn’t the one who killed her. Luo Sui arrived at the abandoned port at 5:49 PM. You can check the taxi records for this. She took a taxi there. Around 6 o’clock, she entered a red shipping container. Then, suddenly a person came out from the side, took an iron chain, and locked the red container up tight, then dragged the red container toward the sea. The container was pretty heavy, and he struggled to drag it. I watched him drag it for ten minutes, and just about when the bottom of the red container touched the seawater, he turned around and left. He definitely left after I did.”
“What did the person you saw look like?” the vice-captain asked again.
This question made Lu Song hesitate for a moment.
“At that time… it was quite dark. I didn’t see what the other person looked like, I only remember it was a tall person.”
Outside the interrogation room, Ji Xun, Huo Ranyin, and Zhao Wu had been listening to the interrogation process the entire time.
“Bring up the surveillance footage from that night again,” Zhao Wu instructed the tech investigator beside him. “Look for someone based on what he said.”
“No need to look, I remember it clearly. The time this bastard left and appeared on the camera was 6:10. That night, on that section of the road, no one else appeared on the surveillance,” the tech investigator said with certainty.
“What about the other direction? Look through a few more cameras, maybe he took a detour,” Zhao Wu asked.
“Nothing there either.” The tech investigator had cross-referenced footage from quite a few cameras at the time, and now mentally placed the evidence piece by piece in front of the criminal investigation captain. “If you get caught doing something bad, aren’t you supposed to lie to escape the crime?”
Zhao Wu didn’t immediately agree, but instead showed a thoughtful expression.
“Actually, there is another way to completely bypass the cameras,” Ji Xun suddenly chimed in.
“How to bypass them? Fly away through the sky?” the tech investigator laughed. Being a tech guy, he naturally believed in modern technology.
“Go by sea,” Ji Xun said simply.
“Right!” Zhao Wu suddenly slapped his thigh. “I knew something felt like an oversight! That’s right, the abandoned port is what’s abandoned, not the sea itself. Boats can still sail there. If they arrived at the abandoned port from the sea, they could easily bypass all the cameras we set up on the land!”
“…” The tech investigator opened and closed his mouth several times, feeling a bit unwilling to accept it. Generally, after working hard all night and seeing that they were about to catch the suspect, finding out it might all be a wild goose chase would leave anyone feeling somewhat unwilling. “So you mean, he’s innocent?”
This time Ji Xun didn’t need to speak; Zhao Wu patted the tech investigator’s shoulder first and said in an exasperated tone:
“You’ve worked on tech so much your brain has gotten rigid.”
“Because there’s no surveillance, and the victim didn’t see the culprit, we can neither prove that Lu Song is telling the truth, nor can we prove that he is lying. The problem now is…” Huo Ranyin said.
He crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze like two sharp knives piercing toward Lu Song in the interrogation room.
As if sensing this, Lu Song smiled at the exact same time.
He said to the police: “Presumption of innocence.”
“Let’s make a simple assumption first. Assuming what Lu Song said is true, and it really wasn’t him who tied Luo Sui up with chains, then who was the person who tied her up?” Ji Xun used this simple question to start the next stage of the discussion.
Regarding Luo Sui, Lao Hu, and Lao Hu’s entire complex family relationship, Huo Ranyin had already concisely informed Zhao Wu. In this case, the suspect was actually very obvious, and Zhao Wu quickly said, “During yesterday’s questioning of the victim, she said her trip to the abandoned port was a spur-of-the-moment decision, and she didn’t tell anyone. In other words, someone who could go there in advance to ambush her must have a very deep understanding of her personality and behavior patterns, and have a direct conflict with her. Ideally, they should also have easy access to boats or speedboats…”
“Hu Zheng,” the vice-captain suddenly interrupted.
The other three looked at him simultaneously. He turned his computer screen to them; it displayed Hu Zheng’s identity information and his work situation—coincidentally, he was a self-employed business owner running a boat repair shop.
Hu Zheng’s boat repair shop was built next to the Qin City waterway system. It was a medium-sized shop covering about a hundred square meters. Inside, besides a repair area, there was a display area showing some brand-new speedboats, kayaks, life rings, and other water equipment. There weren’t many items, and the prices weren’t high, mostly ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand.
When they arrived, before even stepping through the door, they smelled a strong scent of paint. Looking into the shop, they saw Hu Zheng holding a spray gun, repainting a speedboat.
“Boss,” Zhao Wu called out.
“What is it?” Hu Zheng’s initial reply was natural, but as soon as he saw Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin standing behind Zhao Wu, his expression immediately became unnatural. “What are you doing here…”
“Nothing much.” Zhao Wu showed his badge. “Police. We hope you’ll cooperate with an investigation. Where were you yesterday between 5:30 and 7:30 PM?”
“I was at home.”
“Who can testify to that?”
“My wife.”
“Relatives cannot testify for each other. But your residential complex has cameras, right? Come back to the station with us and point out your figure on the camera footage.”
“Wait, hold on, I still have things to do! The shop is busy to death, I can’t leave.”
“It won’t delay you for too long.”
“But on what grounds should I go over there?” Hu Zheng’s face flushed red. Or rather, you couldn’t just say it flushed red—his face was already red to begin with, and once he got agitated, it grew even redder, looking like a tomato about to explode. “What are you investigating me for? What crime did I commit? On what grounds should I go?!”
“…”
There was no need to question him any further. Seeing his fierce-looking but inwardly cowardly, guilty appearance, they knew that driving a boat to the abandoned port to block Luo Sui last night was inextricably linked to Hu Zheng.
Ji Xun began to feel a bit bored and simply strolled around the shop. When he walked over to the kayak Hu Zheng was currently spray-painting, he noticed a long, irregular scratch on the rear of the kayak, smeared with something that looked like black moss.
Ji Xun mentally noted this scene and went over to the display area to look at the brand-new kayaks.
“What are you looking at?”
He had been looking for a while when a voice came from behind. Huo Ranyin had silently walked to his side.
“Looking at boats,” Ji Xun said. “I suddenly realized that we came to Qin City for a trip, yet we haven’t been on a boat or gone sailing.”
“Next time,” Huo Ranyin replied.
“Who knows when we’ll have free time next time,” Ji Xun said, glancing at Huo Ranyin.
“Do you know how to drive a boat?” Ji Xun continued to ask.
“Yes.”
“What about sailing?”
“I’ve tried it.”
“The weather seems pretty good today…” Ji Xun looked at the sea surface. “It’s not raining, and it’s not foggy…”
“…” Huo Ranyin didn’t reply this time.
Ji Xun didn’t speak either. He just repeatedly, slowly cast little glances of anticipation over at him.
“…Alright, you don’t have to say anymore!” In the repair shop, an angry shout suddenly erupted. Hu Zheng said loudly, “I was the one who drove the boat over to tie up Luo Sui last night! How’s that, are you satisfied now?!”
“…” The two of them.
It was certainly the first time they had seen someone commit a crime so righteously and self-confidently.
However, bathing in everyone’s gazes, Hu Zheng appeared even more righteous and self-confident. Driven by his mental state, the lingering redness on his face even revealed a sense of unyielding determination:
“I had a reason for going to find Luo Sui. I just wanted to ask her whether she was the one who killed my dad!”
