Zeng Peng’s mouth had been pried open, but as the saying goes, the last ten miles of a hundred-mile journey are the hardest ninety. His supplier, their pickup locations—it was all still a tangled mess of affairs. However, these matters were no longer for Huo Ranyin and Ji Xun to handle.
Huo Ranyin had completely fulfilled his promise of a clue to the public security captain, Teng Tianhai. He made a call, briefly explained the situation, and waited there for a while. Once the other team arrived to take over Zeng Peng, he led Ji Xun back to the car.
After all this commotion, it was nearly twelve o’clock.
Ji Xun’s eyes were vacant as he stared at the gray ceiling of the car, looking utterly exhausted, his soul seemingly having left his body.
“I’m taking you home now,” Huo Ranyin said. “Really tired?”
“What do you think?”
“Sweat more in peacetime,” Huo Ranyin said, leaving the rest unsaid.
“Bleed less in wartime?” Ji Xun sneered. “I can’t make it to wartime right now, so I can’t bleed.”
“You’re only 29. You can’t be incapable,” Huo Ranyin rephrased.
“Capable or not, you sound so sure. Have you experienced it yourself?” Ji Xun made a dirty joke.
Unfortunately, even after his lewd comment, Huo Ranyin didn’t so much as glance his way. The man kept both hands on the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, not running red lights or overtaking, just proceeding steadily in his own lane like a law-abiding citizen.
Wanting to bicker but getting no response was like punching a marshmallow—it just left one feeling lonely.
Ji Xun said with regret, “Captain Huo must be 62 this year, right?”
Huo Ranyin: “Why do you say that?”
Ji Xun: “Without a certain age, you can’t drive this steadily, like an old ox pulling a plow.”
Just as he finished speaking, Huo Ranyin’s phone rang.
Huo Ranyin immediately turned on his signal, pulled over, and answered the phone. “Hello?”
Huo Ranyin listened quietly for a while, then hung up. He said to Ji Xun, “I just had someone check Cheng Zheng’s travel times.”
“Impressive, Captain Huo. Racing against the clock to solve the case, leaving no stone unturned in the search for truth,” Ji Xun praised.
“The feedback has come in. What Cheng Zheng said was largely correct,” Huo Ranyin continued. “At 8:43 PM on the 19th, Cheng Zheng and the other villagers, including Xi Lei’s parents and younger brother, went to the Old Hometown Restaurant on Xingchun Road for dinner.”
“How far is Xinglin Road from Xingchun Road?” Ji Xun suddenly asked. On the same day, the 19th, at the same time, 7 PM, Tang Jinglong was at the Museum Park on Xinglin Road, and Cheng Zheng was at the Old Hometown Restaurant on Xingchun Road. Based on street naming conventions, the two roads shouldn’t be too far apart.
“They’re right next to each other,” Huo Ranyin said. “Cross one street from the Museum Park and walk another three hundred meters, and you’re at the Old Hometown Restaurant.”
“Wow, such a short distance, such a huge suspicion,” Ji Xun clicked his tongue. “But I bet it’s useless.”
“Intuition again?”
“Does this even require intuition?” Ji Xun scoffed. “Just now, Cheng Zheng described his itinerary in such detail, basically laying it all out for you to check. This attitude can be seen as either brazenly confident or completely open. Either way, since he’s made it so clear, how could he let you find any problems?”
“Do you think he’s the killer?” Huo Ranyin asked.
“I don’t have any feeling about it.” Ji Xun reached into his pocket, pulled out a one-yuan coin, and began flipping it on his fingertips. “How about we ask the coin when in doubt? Heads, he is; tails, he isn’t?”
“…” Huo Ranyin was this close to throwing Ji Xun out of the car.
He kept a straight face and continued, “From the existing evidence, he really isn’t. After 9:48 PM that day, they paid the bill and left the Old Hometown Restaurant, then drove back to their small village. That’s a four-hour drive. At 1:34 AM on the 20th, they exited the highway. This highway is not the same one that goes to Wushan. There was no time to commit the crime in the city. After that day, there are no records of these vehicles entering the city through the highway toll stations. Of course, these vehicles were also not among any of the license plates that entered or exited Wushan after the 19th.”
Just as he finished this sentence, Huo Ranyin’s phone rang again.
This time it was Tan Mingjiu. That guy tended to raise his voice when he got excited.
Ji Xun looked out the car window and noticed they were near his home. Ahead was Ning City Third Hospital. The Third Hospital was only two streets away from his house.
The Third Hospital. It had just been mentioned by the coffee shop employee this morning.
Tang Jinglong had asked a colleague to arrange a hospital bed for the employee’s sick mother—a bed at the Third Hospital.
An ominous premonition bloomed in his heart. He decided to rely on himself and walk home.
He unbuckled his seatbelt, placed one hand on the driver’s seat, and with the other, he tapped his fingers on Huo Ranyin’s long arm, which was resting on the steering wheel.
Huo Ranyin glanced at him and lifted his hand.
Ji Xun leaned over to reach the door lock, but he misjudged the space. His back bumped into Huo Ranyin’s raised arm. The other man’s elbow came down, and his fingers landed on his neck.
The cool fingers were like a drop of water falling from the sky. Ji Xun shivered.
Only after the shiver did he realize that the finger didn’t linger on his neck for long. It lifted slightly, brushed across his forehead, pushing aside the hair that was covering his eyes, and then stretched forward to unlock the car door for him.
He was being considerate for once.
Just then, Huo Ranyin suddenly said, “The people from Liang Jing Jing KTV stated that every time Tang Jinglong appeared at Liang Jing Jing, there was always someone with him. This person is Xu Xinran, a urologist at the Third Hospital, a heavy gambler. He was also the one who argued with Tang Jinglong at the conference on the evening of the 19th. But you guys were a step too late when you arrived, you didn’t catch him, and now he’s driven away from the hospital?”
The Third Hospital, 200 meters ahead.
Xu Xinran had fled in a car.
This was most likely the person who had coffee with Tang Jinglong and solved the coffee shop employee’s mother’s hospital bed problem!
Ji Xun, caught off guard, heard everything and quickly grasped the key points. His ominous premonition had come true. He abruptly sat up straight and spoke rapidly, “This is just a stone’s throw from my place. You’re busy, go do your thing. I’ll walk home myself.”
Too late.
Huo Ranyin’s long arm shot out, pushing Ji Xun back into his seat. It was unclear how he moved so fast, but while he was pulling the seatbelt for Ji Xun, his other hand had already flicked the door lock. At the same time, he stomped on the gas. The engine roared, and the car shot forward like an arrow released from a bow!
The forward inertia pressed Ji Xun firmly into his seat. Seeing his small goal of getting home just a step away, fading further and further into the distance, he squeezed out a single word from his throat: “…Fuck.”
He had cursed too soon.
Huo Ranyin was still on the phone with Tan Mingjiu. Huo Ranyin repeated, “The other party’s car is a blue Jetta, license plate NS8873SN. Yes, I see him.”
Not only did Huo Ranyin see it, but Ji Xun saw it too.
A blue Jetta with that license plate was heading towards them from the front, the two cars in opposite lanes. Both were moving very fast. In just a couple of breaths, the two cars met across the yellow road line.
Just then, Huo Ranyin, like a racing god from Mount Akina, pulled a soul-drifting maneuver. After a dizzying spin, Ji Xun found that the car he was in had changed lanes and direction, directly blocking the path of the blue Jetta.
The two beams of light from the Jetta’s headlights were like two blades piercing through the glass of Ji Xun’s car. Through the blinding glare, Ji Xun could clearly see Xu Xinran’s distorted and frantic expression. He could even seem to hear his panicked shout:
“No—”
In the nick of time, the desperate Xu Xinran yanked the steering wheel. The front of the car turned sharply, scraping past Huo Ranyin’s car and crashing hard into the roadside railing. From the direction he had come, police sirens wailed. One by one, police cars pierced the darkness, catching up and surrounding the blue Jetta, immediately taking Xu Xinran into custody.
Huo Ranyin parked the car properly and turned his head leisurely to look at Ji Xun. “How about that? Not an old ox pulling a plow anymore, am I?”
Ji Xun’s mouth was dry, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Huo Ranyin, did I do something to you? Why do you hate me so much?”
Huo Ranyin smiled slightly. “How do I hate you?”
Ji Xun: “If he hadn’t slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel just now, my passenger seat would have been pierced through. If that’s not hate, what is?”
“I had it under control. I wouldn’t have let anything happen to you.”
“I can’t see that at all.”
“Even if something happened to me, I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” Huo Ranyin said again. “If you’re worried, next time I’ll use my driver’s seat to block.”
Huo Ranyin seemed to be speaking with great sincerity.
Unfortunately, Ji Xun didn’t feel the slightest bit moved. The corner of his mouth twitched. “There’s a next time?”
Seeing the person next to him looking like he was about to bolt at any moment, Huo Ranyin wisely changed the subject. “It’s really over now. Let me continue taking you home. It’s such a short distance, it’s not worth getting a taxi, and walking would be tiring.”
“Home my ass!”
“?”
“Take me to the Raccoon Bar,” Ji Xun said expressionlessly. “I can’t sleep now. Time to party.”
Ji Xun wasn’t joking. Huo Ranyin turned the car around and drove him to the Raccoon Bar.
For people with healthy sleep schedules, twelve o’clock at night was already dream time. But in the bar, with people coming and going, the atmosphere was just heating up. He went through the staff passage to the stage where the drum set was placed. The moment he put on his earpiece and felt the drumsticks in his hand, he unleashed all the frustration in his heart with a fierce crash!
“Crash—”
The lights on the dance floor were a mesmerizing blaze, the crowd a sea of heads. People were flushed with drink, laughing, fooling around, overflowing with passion and joy. Behind them was the drummer. The drumbeats were like rain, like thunder, like a feast for the eardrums presented by Ji Xun.
Huo Ranyin listened in the bar for a while, then turned to the counter. “Can I send flowers?”
When Ji Xun finished drumming and came down from the stage, a large table had already been set up in the center of the bar. On it was a stacked champagne tower. Pink-rosé champagne flowed slowly down from the top, filling the crystal-clear glasses.
The bar’s patrons gathered around the large table, waiting for the host of the champagne tower—Ji Xun—to pick up the topmost glass and kick off the champagne party.
Jenny, at his side, clicked his tongue in amazement. “Big star, someone just sent you a champagne tower. I haven’t seen you for ten days, and you’ve become even more charming. They quietly presented you with this gift without even daring to stick around and ask for your phone number.”
“Anything else besides the champagne tower?”
“And a bouquet of flowers.” Jenny magically pulled a bouquet from behind his back. “There’s a card from him inside. I didn’t peek—did he leave you his contact information?”
Ji Xun took the flowers and pulled out the card. On it were three short lines handwritten by Huo Ranyin, the calligraphy like the man himself, sharp and powerful with a hidden edge:
Police-citizen camaraderie.
Supporting you.
No thanks.
Ji Xun flicked the card with his finger, let out a snort of laughter, then turned, picked up a glass from the champagne tower, raised it dashingly, and said to the crowd:
“Someone’s treating. Don’t be shy. Cheers!”
“Cheers!”
After dropping off Ji Xun, Huo Ranyin was not idle. He drove back to the police station to see the suspect.
When he arrived, the interrogation had just begun. Colleagues from the pre-trial team were inside handling Xu Xinran. It was obvious that progress was not smooth. Apart from saying “I want to see my lawyer” at the very beginning, Xu Xinran was like a mute, refusing to make a sound no matter what the pre-trial team said.
Time ticked by, minute by minute. The excitement from the dopamine rush after catching the suspect was fading. The magic of the night reasserted its power, and the body’s biological clock staunchly resisted the stimulation of the lights, starting to feel drowsy and ready for sleep.
Cups of strong tea were placed on the table, and people started to smoke.
Huo Ranyin sat in a corner, flipping through Xu Xinran’s file.
Xu Xinran, male, 42 years old, master’s degree, attending physician in the urology department of the Third Hospital. Married and divorced, has an 8-year-old son who is in the custody of his ex-wife.
The 1.23 Wushan dismemberment case was extremely brutal and had a severe social impact. The city bureau had already drawn key personnel to form a special task force. The ones interrogating inside now were the elite of the pre-trial team, but it was clear that the suspect caught tonight was also an extremely tough nut to crack among suspects.
The two sides were at a stalemate.
Things were different now. If a suspect was determined not to talk, the police could not force them to. They could only use various methods to break down their mental defenses or use a solid and complete chain of evidence to convince the court and complete a guilty verdict without the suspect saying a word.
But right now, the chain of evidence was far from sufficient to convict the suspect. They could only rely on the pre-trial experts to continue their efforts.
With no progress inside, the task force members had to work the next day and follow up on other clues. They couldn’t all just wait here. The group quickly came to a decision: apart from the pre-trial team, those who needed rest should go rest, and those who wanted to wait could wait a bit longer.
Huo Ranyin chose to stay, but he didn’t just wait idly. The number of business cards found in Tang Jinglong’s safe was considerable, and investigating them was very time-consuming. He took the files and began flipping through them page by page. In between, he heard colleagues calling him to go rest, but he just gave a perfunctory reply and continued as before.
Until someone patted his shoulder.
Huo Ranyin’s shoulder dipped, dodging the hand. He looked up and saw who it was before refraining from any further action.
“Captain Yuan.”
“Go get some sleep. It’s almost five o’clock,” Yuan Yue said. “The pre-trial guys inside are already snoring.”
In fact, the pre-trial team was still waiting to break the suspect. Without more evidence to support them, the interrogation of Xu Xinran could last a maximum of 24 hours. With such a tight schedule, how could they dare to actually sleep? Whether they were playing games or snoring inside, it was all a technique to break down the other party’s psychological defenses.
“Going to sleep now would be awkward,” Huo Ranyin said nonchalantly, waving the file in his hand. “I’ll finish my work and catch up on sleep at noon.”
“It’s good to be young, you don’t get tired at all. Someone like me now has to sleep for a few hours to have any energy.”
Yuan Yue didn’t insist. He stretched lazily and sat down beside Huo Ranyin. He was the first responder at the Wushan crime scene, so naturally, he was now a member of the special task force.
“Captain Yuan is still young,” Huo Ranyin said politely.
“I’m 5 years older than Ji Xun,” Yuan Yue said with a smile. “34, how is that young?”
Huo Ranyin’s heart stirred. “I heard that when Ji Xun joined the police force, he was under you? You trained him?”
“Don’t listen to their nonsense,” Yuan Yue said. “Ji Xun was indeed in my group when he first joined the force, but you can’t really say I trained him. That guy is an incredibly fast learner, born to do this job. When he was in college at the police academy, he solved a murder case within the academy. By the time the police arrived at the scene, the killer, the weapon, the time of the crime, the method, the motive—it was all there. Impressive, right?”
Huo Ranyin’s lips twitched into the shadow of a smile.
“That is pretty impressive.”
After the interlude-like chat, Huo Ranyin continued to look at the files.
Time moved forward again. It wasn’t until eight in the morning, when the pre-trial officers were noisily eating a breakfast ten times more lavish than usual in front of Xu Xinran, that Xu Xinran licked his dry, cracked lips and suddenly spoke: “Can I have a glass of water?”
The first step is always the hardest.
Once that first step was taken, the tightly sealed dam had a breach.
The pre-trial team, full of energy, fulfilled Xu Xinran’s request and then began a swift assault. The interrogation got on track:
“What is your relationship with Tang Jinglong?”
“Just regular friends.”
“Regular friends? A regular friend who cleared 800,000 in gambling debts for you within five years? Your standards for a regular friend are quite high,” the interrogator chuckled.
“We just hit it off,” Xu Xinran added. “And Tang Jinglong had money.”
“On January 19th at 8:43 PM, at the medical equipment conference at Xinglin Road Museum Park, why did you say to Tang Jinglong, ‘You said you’d give me money, where’s the money’?” the interrogator threw out another question.
“That was money Tang Jinglong owed me. I thought he was going to welsh on the debt, so I got anxious… But we cleared up the misunderstanding later, and Tang Jinglong even withdrew 10,000 yuan for me on the spot.”
“One second you’re saying Tang Jinglong had money, the next you’re contradicting your own statement?” the interrogator said. “Why did Tang Jinglong borrow money from you? Is there an IOU? Bank transfer records?”
“…”
“You go to Liang Jing Jing KTV often, right? The people there confessed. They also run a private casino, just more hidden and with bigger stakes. How did it feel to lose 150,000 in one night of high-stakes gambling there on December 8th of last year? You told the people at Liang Jing Jing that Tang Jinglong would come pay the bill, but Tang Jinglong never showed up. You must have panicked, right?”
“I—”
“Think before you speak,” the interrogator said coolly. “You’ll have to sign a statement later, guaranteeing you’ve told the truth. If you’re caught lying and committing perjury, that’s obstructing justice. A hundred lawyers won’t be able to help you then.”
A string of questions, a mix of offense and defense, left Xu Xinran silent for a moment.
Just then, the interrogator, abandoning his previous unhurried pace, suddenly slammed the table and raised his voice, the questions hitting like a torrential storm:
“Let me tell you what really happened on the night of the 19th! You’re addicted to gambling, lost 150,000 in one night, and thought Tang Jinglong would cover this hole for you like before. But he didn’t. He just fobbed you off with 10,000 yuan. So you held a grudge against him, and on the night of the 19th, you murdered him and dismembered his body!”
“I didn’t! I was sleeping at home that night!”
Xu Xinran’s eyes widened. He shot up in excitement, only to be held back by the restraints on the chair. His face turned beet red, and the veins on his forehead throbbed.
“Tang Jinglong did owe me money. That night he promised to give me the money the next day. That ten thousand yuan was a deposit!”
That instantaneous reaction was very real; it didn’t seem like a lie.
Huo Ranyin thought. Short discussions rippled around him. The senior officers observing the interrogation basically confirmed this view, but police work ultimately relied on evidence. Whether it was Xu Xinran or not still required more verification.
The only one who would openly talk about intuition and wild guesses was Ji Xun.
Just then, the police who had gone to Xu Xinran’s home with a search warrant returned with the results:
No murder weapon was found in Xu Xinran’s home. The floor of his home did not have patterned mosaic tiles. Interviews with Xu Xinran’s upstairs and downstairs neighbors revealed no suspicious activity recently.
This was unfavorable news.
With grim faces, everyone continued to wait for the pre-trial team to break through with Xu Xinran.
After a few more rounds of confrontation inside, Xu Xinran, cornered, suddenly blurted out, “I told you I didn’t kill anyone! That money was indeed what Tang Jinglong owed me. Tang Jinglong asked me to perform a ‘flying knife’ surgery for him. The 150,000 was the surgery fee!”
“Surgery on who, where was the surgery, did it fail or succeed?!” the interrogator fired off a string of questions.
“The surgery was very successful.” It was unknown what scab this question picked at in Xu Xinran’s heart, but his face showed anger. “You see I’m an attending physician and think I’m the kind of person who fails at surgery? Let me tell you, if the Third Hospital really ranked people by skill, the position of chief urologist today should be mine!”
Outside the interrogation room, the veteran criminal investigators exchanged glances, making a preliminary conclusion about Xu Xinran’s personality:
He’s knowledgeable and has some skill, but his psychological fortitude is weak, and his ability to handle pressure is low. He always feels his talents are unrecognized. He’s the type of suspect who, once his mouth is opened, can’t keep things in.
Sure enough, under the pre-trial team’s relentless questioning, Xu Xinran confessed everything: “On December 20th, I performed surgery at Ning City Health Hospital. The patient was an eight-year-old boy with uremia who needed a kidney transplant. He’s the same age as my son. I performed the surgery very carefully for him. The surgery was a complete success, with no complications. After the surgery, I even gave him a little yellow duck. He was very happy and said, ‘Thank you, uncle.'”
“150,000 for one ‘flying knife’ surgery. Didn’t you think there was something wrong with that?”
Xu Xinran was silent for a moment, then said reluctantly, “Maybe the source of the kidney was a bit problematic, who knows. Anyway, I just did my job. I operate, I get paid. Why should I care so much?”
The interrogator was furious. “Why should you care so much! Do you think this has nothing to do with you? Do kidneys just grow on trees? Kidneys are inside the human body! What does an unknown kidney source mean? It means it might have been lost from someone else now, and in the future, it could be lost from me, from you, from your eight-year-old son!”
Xu Xinran lowered his head.
For the first time during the entire interrogation, he lowered his proudly held head.
A series of chairs scraping sounded. The news brought back by the police who searched Xu Xinran’s home could only prove that his home was not the dismemberment site. His alibi of sleeping at home on the night of the incident had no witnesses and was not credible. He was still highly suspicious.
But what Xu Xinran had confessed gave the police a brand new direction for their investigation—Tang Jinglong’s involvement in organ trafficking.
At that moment, someone came in from outside and said that Xu Xinran’s lawyer had arrived and was demanding his client’s release.
The special task force discussed it internally for a moment, and after considering the opinion of the pre-trial team, they decided to end this interrogation for now. They let Xu Xinran go with his lawyer, and they would deploy police forces to investigate the lead Xu Xinran had provided.
Huo Ranyin left with the others, glancing at the time as he went: 8:30 AM.
Excluding the stalemate of the entire night before, from the real start until now, it was all settled in half an hour.
Like smashing rotten wood, the breakthrough was truly fast.
Inside the interrogation room, Xu Xinran kept his head bowed for a long, long time. In an angle that the surveillance cameras couldn’t capture and the police couldn’t see, the corner of his mouth curled up.
A cunning, relieved smile flashed and was gone.
