“…Ahem.”
Zhao Wu spoke up quickly to interrupt them.
“Yo, Old Zhao, finished with the interrogation?” the deputy asked with a grin. “Tell the group—do you have any unique insights or exclusive information about excising the crotch area?”
“…”
Zhao Wu felt that the deputy’s resentment toward him wouldn’t be dissipating anytime soon. He served him a cup of hot tea, respectfully drove him away from his seat, and then distributed the transcripts of Wen Meihua’s statement to everyone: “The victim’s family’s testimony is all here.”
In addition to that, there were further details added by the forensic examiner regarding findings on the corpse.
“The fatal wound is on the occipital bone above the back of the head. The killer would need to be about 10 cm taller than the victim… the victim is 172 cm. How tall is Old Hu again?” Ji Xun asked.
“Old Hu is 182 cm.” Huo Ranyin answered definitively without needing Zhao Wu to check the files. After answering, he pointed out a flaw in Ji Xun’s deduction: “The terrain on the mountain is complex; it would be easy to find a higher vantage point to strike the victim. One cannot simply deduce the killer’s height based on that.”
“Reasonable.” Ji Xun nodded, accepting the correction.
After all, the point of a discussion is to brainstorm and speak freely. Three cobblers are better than one Zhuge Liang; anyone can overlook something or make a mistake. Finding the key to the truth by discovering others’ errors and gaining inspiration is the very purpose of holding a discussion.
“Tamagotchi?” Huo Ranyin read the line of English on the file, then looked at the high-definition photo provided by the forensic team, frowning with slight confusion. “This was found in the victim’s pants pocket. What is this?”
“Tamagotchi? It’s a digital pet,” the deputy reminisced about the past. “Produced in ’96 or ’97, I think. I was in high school then; it brings back memories. It’s no exaggeration to say that during every break, whoever pulled this out became the center of attention for the entire class. As students nowadays would say, he was the ‘B-king’ of the school, haha.”
The expressions of the others remained unremarkable; clearly, they had all heard of or played with such things. Ji Xun had heard of them and played with them too, and he remembered the scenes the deputy described.
He glanced at Huo Ranyin. The confusion between Huo Ranyin’s brows had dissipated, and he continued flipping through the records.
1996, 1997.
Huo Ranyin would have been exactly six or seven years old. His parents should have been alive then. A child born into a wealthy family who had no impression of what was popular among his peers—anyone could guess why. A child living under domestic abuse is likely using every ounce of strength just to survive.
Right under the noses of the others, Ji Xun quietly did something slightly unprofessional.
He lightly bumped his foot against Huo Ranyin’s leg. When the other man’s gaze, filled with slight confusion, fell upon him, he used his finger to gently trace on his pant leg.
“They have nostalgic versions of Tamagotchi now. I’ll buy you one to play with later.”
Physical wounds can be seen; wounds of the heart cannot.
Physical wounds can heal; he wanted to help heal the wounds of the heart, little by little.
Huo Ranyin’s leg trembled, and he accidentally knocked his knee against the leg of the table. The “thud” sounded like a massive heartbeat leaking out from his chest, wrapped in his secret. He stared rigidly at the file, not daring to look up for a moment.
Thankfully, no one noticed.
The topic had drifted a bit far.
A toy found in a pocket is worth noting, but they couldn’t conjure more valuable clues from thin air.
Ji Xun pulled the conversation back: “Do you think Old Hu is the killer in this case of a corpse hidden in a Buddha?”
“I think he is!” the deputy stated clearly.
“We cannot be so rash.” This point of view belonged to Huo Ranyin and Zhao Wu. One emphasized evidence, and the other was meticulous; their conclusions often converged.
“If Hu Kun isn’t the killer,” the deputy didn’t want to be left behind and expressed his thoughts first, “how could he tell the murder story so clearly? How is it such a coincidence? He has dealings with a company that hides bombs in warehouses, his girlfriend commits kidnappings, he’s a stalker old man whose grandson uses the dark web—and he just happens to go up the mountain and see a crime scene from the sidelines? Cases where the reporter is the killer are common. Even if it’s twenty years late, he is still the primary reporter.”
“In Hu Kun’s story,” Huo Ranyin said, “the tags on the Buddhas containing the corpses were intentionally swapped. They should have been placed in a side hall but were ultimately placed in the main hall. And the two Buddha statues in the side hall were sunk in the sea under the guise of being ‘contaminated’ shortly after completion—the temple wasn’t even fully built yet.”
He mentioned these details to pave the way for the following question.
“A normal killer would naturally want to completely eliminate all evidence. If he had sealed the victim inside the Buddha and sunk it in the sea back then, I’m afraid we would have no way of knowing today.”
Without a corpse, it could only be classified as a missing person case. This potential murder case would just drag on year after year.
“So, if Hu Kun is the killer, why didn’t he throw the corpse into the sea? Why didn’t he destroy all the evidence?”
“The act of swapping them was in his story. If he committed the murder and followed the plan to splash filth on the Buddhas to have them sunk, but then realized—perhaps when the mountain temple opened, and the records say it was fully completed after April 1998—that he had swapped the wrong Buddha, it might have been too difficult to tamper with the Ananda in the main hall. So, he fabricated this story of swapping them. That is also a possibility,” Ji Xun proposed.
“Hu Kun is a cautious and meticulous person. If he really committed the murder and left behind such an obvious trail, I tend to believe he wouldn’t have told us this story at all,” Huo Ranyin said.
A case has a unique solution. However, there are too many twisted paths leading to that solution. Until the truth is found, it’s always a case of this path looking right, or that one looking plausible.
“In 1997, Hu Kun was 61. He was healthy; with a cart for support, he could have moved the corpse into the Buddha,” the deputy said firmly. “Even if Hu Kun didn’t kill him, there must be a social connection between them that we don’t know about. With a twenty-year-old corpse, no crime scene evidence remains. Since we can’t find anything on the body, I think the person we should thoroughly investigate is Hu Kun.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that. After the incident yesterday, I sent people to Lu Song’s hometown to check with Hu Kun’s ex-wife,” Zhao Wu interjected, referring to the warehouse explosion at Zhixian Company.
The discussion ended there, as there was no evidence to support further analysis. The group dispersed early to rest up and continue the investigation later.
The ordinary officers went home, the deputy returned to the hospital to continue recovering, and Zhao Wu set up a makeshift bed in the station to pull the night shift. It was fine; it was lucky they were out of town. If they were back in Ning City, that duty would have fallen to Huo Ranyin.
But now, the two could openly return to their hotel to catch up on sleep.
Upon reaching the hotel, their first act was to rush into the bathroom to run hot water, helping each other wipe down and disinfect from head to toe with hot towels and antiseptic. Normally, they wouldn’t be so particular, but since both were injured and their wounds hadn’t fully healed, this was necessary to prevent infection.
Still, after so many days without a proper hot bath, it felt like something was missing.
When they were finished cleaning up and ready to leave the bathroom, Ji Xun saw Huo Ranyin looking up at the showerhead. A man usually so stoic, his eyes held a gaze so intense it seemed he wanted to pull the showerhead right off.
Ji Xun used a mix of coaxing and persuasion to finally get the man out of the dangerous bathroom.
Once out, both of them—who had ignored doctor’s orders and pulled an all-nighter—voluntarily went to bed.
Ji Xun felt they needed a ritual before sleeping to respect the attending physician’s advice…
So he boiled a pot of water, tossed in some American ginseng, and poured a cup for himself and Huo Ranyin to keep by the bedside: “Drink up. Let’s replenish those cells that died from the all-nighter.”
“Not necessary,” Huo Ranyin said without even lifting his eyes.
“Young people don’t know how to take care of themselves. You’ll start getting anxious by the time you reach my age,” Ji Xun sighed.
“…” Huo Ranyin was speechless for a moment, giving Ji Xun a look of disdain that suggested he was the type to “rave with ginseng and drink beer with goji berries.”
Yet, the cup of ginseng water found its way into Huo Ranyin’s hand, and he took a sip.
Ji Xun seized the opportunity to hop into bed, hooking his arms around Huo Ranyin’s neck and sharing a taste of the water. The ginseng water was already sweet, but after passing through the mouth of the person he loved, it truly tasted like a tonic. One sip, and his heart, liver, spleen, and lungs felt both warm and invigorated.
After getting his goodnight kiss, Ji Xun let go of Huo Ranyin, lay down with his head resting on Huo Ranyin’s arm, and watched him use his phone: “Chatting with the team in Ning City?”
“Mhm. Asking how things are going over there.”
“And?”
“Nothing going on.”
Meaning there were no new cases, and no new leads on old ones. A constant state of neither good nor bad, where nothing happens.
In their WeChat group, Tan Mingjiu was the most active. Tan Mingjiu asked: “Captain Huo, when are you coming back? Are you coming to the station tomorrow?”
“Finished. Not going tomorrow,” Huo Ranyin typed. “There’s been an explosion here.”
“?!” Tan Mingjiu.
“And we found a case of a corpse hidden in a Buddha statue,” Ji Xun added.
“?!?!?!” Tan Mingjiu.
“We’ll be staying here for a few more days,” Huo Ranyin concluded.
“Wait,” Tan Mingjiu hesitated. “If I remember correctly, didn’t you just say the nanny murder case was closed yesterday morning?”
“There was an explosion in the afternoon, we started investigating the Buddha-corpse case in the evening, found the body during the day today, and we’ve already been investigating for a full day now.” Such a thoughtful addition could only have come from Ji Xun.
“…” Tan Mingjiu.
“…” Wen Yangyang.
“…” Little Glasses.
“…” Yuan Yue.
This member of the First Team had quietly blended into the Second Team’s group without anyone finding it strange.
Finally, Tan Mingjiu said: “Captain Huo, please busy yourselves in Qin City with peace of mind. During the time you’ve been away, the Second Team has been fine, and the First Team has been fine—everything is harmonious with no murders.”
“…” Huo Ranyin.
“…” Ji Xun.
They both had the feeling they were being subtly insulted!
After a brief exchange of information, neither felt like chatting further and soon turned out the lights to sleep.
After sleeping until dawn, they received a call from Zhao Wu. He brought first-hand clues about Hu Kun, found by the police he dispatched to Fujian in coordination with local authorities:
Hu Kun’s original name was Lu Kun, born in 1936, with ancestral roots in Fujian. The death certificate on file was issued in 1978 and cited a shipwreck.
According to the inquiries and observations of the police who visited the scene, Hu Kun’s first wife, Fang Guo, had not remarried and had no other intimate relationships; to this day, she lived alone with her son and daughter-in-law.
As for why Hu Kun died in a shipwreck at that time, Fang Guo refused to say. When pressed, she would just say she was old and confused and couldn’t remember. When they asked other members of Fang Guo’s family, they received the same answer.
She wouldn’t even say when he went missing.
There was definitely a problem here.
It was worth digging deeper.
The Qin City police didn’t give up. Together with the local police, they flipped through old newspaper records day by day, starting from 1978, and finally found it:
April 29, 1976.
The ocean fishing vessel Dingbo went missing; after a fruitless search, it was confirmed sunk. All 22 crew members were reported missing.
“Dingbo? ‘The wind settles, the waves are calm’?” Ji Xun muttered to himself, then asked suspiciously, “Hu Kun’s first wife didn’t remarry. Hu Yan lied. Why would she lie?”
There was another sentence, hidden at the root of his tongue, that remained unspoken.
Hu Yan grew up with Old Hu. Just how much does she know about all these illegal and criminal activities that Old Hu was tangled up in?
Zhao Wu, however, was not concerned with that.
“Regarding this Dingbo vessel, our people dug a little deeper and found something…”
“What did they find?” Huo Ranyin asked, puzzled by Zhao Wu’s hesitation. Why would such a small clue require him to speak in gasps and starts?
“The ocean fishing vessel Dingbo was registered under the name of Huo Shanyuan,” Zhao Wu finally said.
Huo Shanyuan.
Huo Ranyin’s grandfather.
