Huo Ranyin and Yuan Yue had already walked up to the cold storage unit and were discussing the items inside.
The surrounding police officers were not idle either; they were inspecting the scene for any other less conspicuous but vital evidence—such as hair, footprints, fingerprints, and the like.
Ji Xun stood in place for a short moment. Instead of stepping forward, he quietly retreated outside the building.
The situation by now had become clear. As he had previously analyzed, this abandoned factory was undoubtedly a hidden yet crucial warehouse.
From here on out, based on the existing evidence, the protocol would involve bloodstain analysis, hair collection, and tracking down the origins of the operating table, the cold storage unit, and even the medical waste bags. This kind of step-by-step, routine screening work required a great deal of manpower and resources. It would proceed more or less the same with or without him, so there was no need for his specialized participation.
He returned to the factory grounds.
By this time, the villagers had gathered around, gesturing and gossiping about the place. Some even pulled out their phones to snap pictures of them, while the bolder ones directly yelled out: “What about the people down by the shore? Are you taking them all away? There’ll be no one left to look after the kids and the elderly at home!”
The person shouting was immediately rebuked and silenced.
Following that, the police began questioning which households were affected, the specific circumstances at home, how young the children were, how old the elderly were, and whether any of them were incapacitated.
Ji Xun ignored all of this; the perimeter police were perfectly capable of handling it.
He lowered his head to search through the grass along the path he had just walked… Soon, from the knee-high weeds, he unearthed the object he was looking for—the torn-open bread wrapper he had spotted upon entering.
Keeping his gloves on, he picked up the bread wrapper.
On the transparent plastic bag was a large “Panpan” logo, and beneath it was a line of black, printed production and expiration dates.
Production Date: 2016.02.18
Expiration Date: 2016.08.18
The timeframe was very recent; it wasn’t ancient garbage. This meant someone had been here recently and left the wrapper behind… Could it be the people using the factory?
It wasn’t certain yet.
It could just as easily have been casually tossed away by a passing villager, or perhaps swept over by the sea breeze.
To distinguish its origin, he needed to find more supporting evidence.
Ji Xun patted his knees, stood up, placed the bread wrapper into an evidence bag, and took another lap around the factory’s open grounds.
Without much effort, he located a black trash can positioned just outside the perimeter wall.
The trash can was circular, waist-high, and had a lid. It matched the uniform style of the village that Ji Xun had seen earlier when he was wandering the alleys wearing his red headphones.
He opened the lid.
There wasn’t much garbage inside, only a tiny bit of residue—such as a blackened banana peel stuck to the bottom and a dried apple core.
Looking closer at the inner walls of the trash can, the filth was by no means an ancient greyish-brown. Instead, it bore fresh marks that still carried the scent of rot and could be scraped off with a finger.
This trash can has been used as well, Ji Xun thought to himself.
And judging by the marks, it had been used quite frequently…
“What have you found?” a voice suddenly sounded from behind.
Ji Xun turned his head and discovered that Huo Ranyin had come out at some unknown point.
“Traces of recent use,” Ji Xun chin-gestured toward the trash can in front of him.
“A good piece of corroborating evidence.” The tension between Huo Ranyin’s brows eased.
This factory was remotely located with no residential housing nearby, which meant that if a large amount of garbage appeared here multiple times, it must have been discarded by people who came to the factory and stayed for a certain duration.
Following this train of thought further down, the sanitation workers at the village’s trash recycling station would also be well worth questioning. It might be possible to find clues to lock down the suspects through the refuse they collected.
However, all of these were matters that required follow-up later.
For now, after seizing the ship with the suspects and the contraband, and subsequently discovering a massive amount of large-scale medical equipment in the abandoned factory, a sliver of morning sun finally broke through the pitch-black sky. The police brought all the suspects and evidence back to the bureau. The team, having been out on a mission all night, separated to go home and rest for half a day.
Yet, Ji Xun did not rest well this time.
He arrived home around seven in the morning and lay down to sleep, but by less than ten o’clock, he was already wide awake. However, this wakefulness was different from the past. Before, being awake felt like being trapped inside a cocoon—a frustrating state where he couldn’t tell which direction led to an exit. Now, he woke up eagerly and full of energy simply because there were too many things waiting to be done.
Ji Xun lay there with his eyes open for two seconds, unable to find even a trace of sleepiness left in his body.
He turned his head to look at the other half of the bed; Huo Ranyin was still fast asleep.
This was a rare sight. It was likely because the case had reached a milestone, allowing his tightly wound nerves to finally relax.
Ji Xun gently lifted the blanket, but the movement caused the sleeping Huo Ranyin to stir alertly.
Ji Xun froze instantly, but that sliver of alertness seemed to have already acted upon every cell in Huo Ranyin’s body. The sleeper’s eyelashes began to flutter, and he was on the verge of opening his eyes the next moment.
Since it had already come to this—
A thought struck Ji Xun. Doing the exact opposite of what was expected, he proactively reached out and patted Huo Ranyin’s shoulder: “It’s fine, go back to sleep.”
The fluttering eyelashes lifted slightly, and the closed eyes cracked open a fraction.
Lacking the deep blackness of his usual fully awake gaze, his eyes were colored by the sunlight filtering through the deep green curtains, turning them into the deep green of a pool in a silent forest. The faint glint shifting within looked like scattered flowers drifting upon a deep pond.
Huo Ranyin squinted at Ji Xun, then lowered his head to nuzzle the back of Ji Xun’s hand.
His cool cheek, along with his soft strands of hair, brushed past Ji Xun’s skin all at once, feeling momentarily like a cat rubbing its face against him.
Then, abandoning Ji Xun, Huo Ranyin turned over, pulled the blanket up, and buried himself back inside to sleep peacefully.
Only a voice slipping from his throat managed to squeeze out through the gap in the blanket, offering a belated response: “……Mm.”
A nice morning gift, Ji Xun rubbed his fingers, thoroughly satisfied.
Although Ji Xun did not wish to disturb Huo Ranyin’s sleep, the tranquility of the early morning was soon shattered by the ringing of Huo Ranyin’s phone.
Ji Xun watched helplessly as Huo Ranyin, who had just curled up like a cat a moment ago, abruptly threw off the blanket and answered the call: “……”
But after picking up, Huo Ranyin didn’t speak immediately. Squinting his eyes, he first swallowed a mouthful of saliva, then grabbed Ji Xun’s hand to press it against his own neck before finally speaking. His voice was cold and clear, devoid of even a hint of the drowsiness from just waking up: “What is it?”
“……”
Ji Xun stroked him a few more times.
#Daily Tip on a New Technique for Rearing a Contrary Cat#
“……You found one of the individuals involved in Zheng Xuejun’s fatal fall?” Huo Ranyin’s voice rose slightly, and Ji Xun’s attention was instantly drawn over as well. “Did you manage to find out who the mastermind behind the brawl was?”
The person calling was Tan Mingjiu.
Tan Mingjiu’s voice sounded incredibly exasperated: “No. They only know the name of the ‘big brother’ who brought them there. As for whether there was another big brother above that big brother, what the purpose of the fight was, or why they scheduled it for that specific time and place—they know absolutely nothing. Fuck, is his head just a decorative piece on his shoulders?!”
Ji Xun could understand Tan Mingjiu’s irritability.
After investigating diligently and painstakingly up to this point, to the extent that the dawn of success was right before their eyes, the case suddenly threw out its back—telling you that this wasn’t the light of success, but a mirage of a hallucination… Stepping into empty air and falling from the clouds straight into hell would make anyone feel miserable.
“Continue the investigation down the line using the name of the big brother he confessed to,” Huo Ranyin said in a deep voice. “As long as the clues don’t snap, finding the person is only a matter of time.”
“Logically speaking, yes… Sigh, finding this person really doesn’t carry much significance. It’s even less than what Li Xiaochu recalled, yet Li Xiaochu couldn’t provide any valuable clues either.” Too many words brought nothing but tears; Tan Mingjiu’s bitterness bled through the phone.
The call ended, and any remaining drowsiness vanished into thin air.
Huo Ranyin glanced at the time: “Let’s order takeout. What do you want to eat this morning?”
Ji Xun sank into contemplation for a moment, then suddenly said: “We overlooked a point earlier.”
“Which point?”
“Li Xiaochu.”
“?”
“Li Xiaochu is a storyteller,” Ji Xun muttered to himself. He abruptly flipped out of bed, walked swiftly into the study, and turned on the computer.
Li Xiaochu was a picture book artist. She wasn’t exceptionally famous, but she wasn’t completely obscure either; the contents of her picture books could be searched directly on the internet. Ji Xun first looked up the work that made Li Xiaochu famous. After flipping through it incredibly fast, he abandoned it. Next, he looked for her other works, flipping through three, four, five, six books in a row before finally stopping.
On the webpage of the computer in front of him, the screen remained on a picture book titled The Days of Li Xiaochu. This was Li Xiaochu’s debut work.
The main plotline of this picture book story was very loose, generally telling the tale of a small carp’s journey along a stream, what scenery the carp saw on the way, what animals it encountered, and so forth.
Most of these landscapes and animals were generic, sometimes appearing in only one or two panels.
However, there was a black soot ball among them that appeared quite a few times and occupied a significant portion of the pages.
On its very first appearance, it handed a small daisy to the little carp and said, “It suits you well.”
The little carp took the daisy and placed it on its head, thereby birthing the cartoon character beloved by readers—”The Little Carp Wearing a Daisy.”
Following that, the author spent a large amount of ink describing the process of the black soot ball and the little carp becoming friends, up until the black soot ball said: “On Monday, I’ll take you to my secret base.”
But on the appointed day, the little carp waited and waited, from dawn until dusk, and from dusk until dawn, yet the black soot ball never appeared. The black soot ball never showed up again from that day onward.
“Looking at this story, what does it make you think of?” Ji Xun asked Huo Ranyin.
“Zheng Xuejun,” Huo Ranyin said.
“Without a doubt,” Ji Xun stated. “Writers fall into two categories. One category only tells stories; the other always tells of life. The latter outnumbers the former by a vast margin because stories belong to expression, and expression is based on human nature, which inevitably reflects the writer’s experiences, thoughts, personality, and preferences… I believe Li Xiaochu belongs to the latter category. She couldn’t help but adapt her own experiences into a story, and from this story based on the past, we have caught a glimpse of a vital clue.”
Ji Xun’s eyes shone brightly.
“The little carp is Li Xiaochu, and the black soot ball is Zheng Xuejun. Li Xiaochu and Zheng Xuejun once had an appointment. In the story, the time they agreed upon was on a Monday. April 1, 1996, happened to fall exactly on a Monday. This kind of detail is either left unwritten, or if it is written, there is no need to fabricate it. Therefore, I am inclined to believe that in reality, on April 1, 1996—the very day Zheng Xuejun fell to his death—he and Li Xiaochu had a date.”
Hearing this, Huo Ranyin rapidly connected it to the phone call from Tan Mingjiu just now.
Combining it with this tiny detail, a critical piece of information emerged from that phone call which had been filled with Tan Mingjiu’s complaints and frantic venting.
“Tan Mingjiu said ‘the parties involved had scheduled a time and place for a fight’—this was also a pre-determined event.”
“Exactly,” Ji Xun picked up. “Tan Mingjiu thought the person he found was utterly meaningless, but in reality, it is precisely the ‘appointment’ condition provided by this person that allows us to find the key to breaking the ice: given that both the date and the fight were planned in advance, why would a conflict in scheduling occur?”
Ji Xun took a breath, his expression turning peculiar:
“Once we understand the answer to this question, we will have uncovered Zheng Xuewang’s greatest motive for avenging Zheng Xuejun by murdering Chen Jiashu…”
