The small interlude was cut short by a sentence from Yuan Yue.
Yuan Yue lowered his head in thought for a moment, then asked Ji Xun, “What’s your full analysis?”
This was a habit from when they were partners. Yuan Yue wasn’t a man of many words, so when it came to the final analysis, he would always give the floor to Ji Xun first. They hadn’t been partners for very long, and he didn’t know why Yuan Yue still maintained this habit even now.
Ji Xun didn’t really want to speak, it was a waste of breath.
In any case, not much of this long-winded reasoning would end up in the final case report. The requirements for case reports were high now; the chain of evidence had to be flawless, and every step forward required solid proof.
He said perfunctorily, “There’s nothing much to analyze. I’ll just give the conclusion. The case has progressed this far, you guys should have your own ideas. Let’s compare answers. If they match, it proves our conclusion is more or less correct. Then we can each go back to our own cases. Saving time is saving lives.”
“No,” Yuan Yue’s seriousness and rigor never disappeared, no matter the situation. “The answer is one thing, the process is another. In the college entrance exams, showing your work gets you more points than just having the answer. You never used to find the process of reasoning, analyzing, and summarizing a case troublesome.”
“People change. I find it troublesome now. Besides, Captain Huo isn’t here with us. If he’s not here to listen to the detective show, I always feel a bit empty.”
Ji Xun complained, glancing at the screen. Only then did he notice that Huo Ranyin on the screen was fiddling with his body camera, pointing its lens at the screen, looking like a professor starting a class and expecting his student to take notes.
Huo Ranyin, still adjusting the camera without looking up, replied, “My body may not be by your side, but my heart has flown to yours.”
“…?”
Yuan Yue looked at Ji Xun, then at Huo Ranyin.
A question mark slowly formed in his mind, and along with it, many thoughts.
You two are really good at joking.
But the jokes seem a bit strange.
You two…
These words tumbled around in his head, but none of them escaped his mouth, as if saying them out loud would make the atmosphere… um, would make it…
After finishing with the body camera, Huo Ranyin looked up and met Yuan Yue’s strange expression. He finally realized what he had just said.
“What I mean is—”
He stiffened slightly, then shot a glare at Ji Xun.
“No nonsense, no whining. Get to the point.”
“?” Ji Xun was utterly innocent. He was used to talking nonsense, but who knew Huo Ranyin would suddenly play along? He was quite surprised himself.
“Right, right.” Yuan Yue, as if relieved of a great burden, chewed and hastily swallowed the skewer that had been forgotten in his mouth and had started to taste a bit off. “Hurry up and start. Get it over with.”
The gazes of both men once again focused on Ji Xun.
Ji Xun rubbed his nose and finally ate a skewer that had been neglected to the point of near tears.
“Let’s get the rest to go. We’ll talk about the important stuff in the car. Just in case some tabloid editor or overly curious passerby overhears and we end up with another viral social media trend.”
The food was packed up, and Ji Xun sat in the front passenger seat of Yuan Yue’s car.
Yuan Yue drove towards Huo Ranyin’s location, while Ji Xun placed his phone directly in front of himself. This time, he didn’t let Yuan Yue into the frame, just himself and Huo Ranyin, one-on-one, face-to-face.
“I’ll just talk casually, and you guys can listen casually. It’s all just wild guessing, so don’t take it too seriously.
All these cases can be roughly divided into two parts. First, the 22-year-old cold case of Tang Zhixue. Second, the series of chain reactions triggered by Xin Yongchu killing Zhao Yuanliang.
Yuan Yue, you should be clear about the case from 22 years ago, so I’ll only talk about what came after.
From the very beginning of the case, I was thinking about a perplexing question—when Xin Yongchu threatened Zhao Yuanliang with a knife, why did Zhao Yuanliang refuse to give up his accomplice, even to the death?
From the video, Zhao Yuanliang doesn’t seem like a very tough guy. In that kind of emergency situation, people tend to seek advantages and avoid harm. Shouldn’t he have tried to stabilize Xin Yongchu with any means possible, to try and survive? Moreover, Xin Yongchu’s initial killing intent wasn’t strong; he was just seeking an answer.
Let’s put ourselves in Zhao Yuanliang’s shoes. He’s the murderer from 22 years ago. He knows Xin Yongchu’s questioning is targeted. He’s afraid of death; he doesn’t want to die. He has to think of a way to neither provoke Xin Yongchu’s vengeful anger nor leave evidence for the police that could lead to a conviction. The best choice would be to admit partial involvement, tell a lie that Xin Yongchu couldn’t verify on the spot, shift the blame to his accomplice, and buy himself time until the police arrive. That way, even if it’s recorded on camera, he could later argue with the police that it was an act of emergency avoidance.
But he didn’t do that. He just kept begging for mercy and denying everything.
What made him not even consider the option of telling a mix of truth and lies?
There are two possibilities. One, he’s naturally slow-witted, and his brain shut down in that situation, unable to think of a way to save himself. Two, he believed that if he spoke up, the outcome would be no better than immediate death, or possibly even worse.
I’m a fan of conspiracy theories, so I choose two. I guess he was under some kind of threat from his accomplice all along.
Before I walked into Qian Shumao’s, that is, Qian Xingfa’s, study today, I thought this threat came from Qian Shumao himself. But the silver nitrate and milk candy found in that study told me, no. The one threatening him, and Qian Shumao, was someone else.”
Ji Xun rested his head on the headrest of the passenger seat.
He looked up at the car’s ceiling, which was covered in a layer of gray felt.
That layer of felt was reflected in Ji Xun’s pupils, like the countless tangled threads of this case.
“Qian Shumao, the manager of Fuxing Education, middle-aged, no parents, all alone. He has a great fortune but isn’t married, only has a live-in partner. The partner bore him a child, a boy, but he didn’t even register the boy’s household.
This is very strange for a normal middle-aged man who wants to carry on his family line.
But for a man who obtained a fake death certificate through unknown means 20 years ago and changed his identity, it’s not strange at all.
In this case, Qian Shumao did one thing: he widely spread the ‘poison milk candy’ articles. From the results of this action, we can deduce his original intention.
Those anxiety-peddling articles that spread like wildfire among parents in Ning City were meant to encourage the emergence of more copycat milk candy cases.
In modern society, education is a bottomless pit with no upper limit, a perpetual motion machine for creating anxiety. It’s directly linked to money, the future, and even social class. Among the families that were targeted to receive and read these articles, some were under immense financial pressure, others were living empty lives. If, out of ten thousand families, this article became the ‘last straw’ for just one, it was a victory for Qian Shumao.
What’s more, the effect was much better than Qian Shumao expected. Just today, there were two consecutive deaths.
The nursing home, needless to say, caring for the elderly was likely seen as an unnecessary burden by the son who is the prime suspect. And a child with cerebral palsy is an undeniable physical and mental pressure.
Combining this with the silver nitrate he purchased for himself, found in his study, it’s likely that the fundamental purpose of him manufacturing copycat cases was to hide the person he intended to poison among the many victims of silver nitrate copycat crimes and Xin Yongchu’s own random poisonings, like hiding a leaf in a forest.
Of course, it seems he was hit by a car before he could carry out his crime.
Okay, so we have the scheme. What about the motive?
Why did he choose this particular time to try and commit this crime?
Looking at it in isolation, it’s impossible to guess. But if we look at it in conjunction with Zhao Yuanliang, we might be able to make a bold speculation—
Like Zhao Yuanliang, he was also under some kind of threat. To eliminate this threat, he needed to use a scheme to murder someone.
What could simultaneously threaten two murderers who had been on the run for 22 years, making one refuse to speak even in death, and the other so afraid that he wanted to kill someone?
Zhao Yuanliang and Qian Shumao were not short of money. Before Xin Yongchu appeared, neither the victims’ families nor the police could find them, so they couldn’t be subject to revenge or arrest.
So, the only remaining threat must come from someone who knew about the case back then.
This person not only knows the entire process of their crime but must also hold some kind of ironclad evidence of their murders. If it were brought out, it would be a death warrant, capable of destroying everything they have at any moment and sending them to the gallows.
There is one piece of evidence to support this deduction.
I once saw an ‘@all’ mention on Xu Shuoguo’s phone. Based on what we’ve now verified, that should be this poison milk candy article. Which means, this article began to circulate on the morning of February 2nd.
Three things happened on February 1st. One, First Moment published the article about Xin Yongchu. Two, Half a Cabbage made a video introducing the Tang Zhixue case. Three, the Shanghai police reported the first copycat case in the evening.
Therefore, Qian Shumao’s inspiration must have come from number three, while his impulse to kill must have come from one and two.
Qian Shumao saw that Zhao Yuanliang was dead and knew the police were vigorously investigating the murder of Tang Zhixue. He started to get scared. Scared of being found by the police, and also scared—of being pushed out to take the fall.
After all, he and Zhao Yuanliang were the ones who did the killing. That other person never lifted a finger from start to finish. It’s been 22 years now. Qian Shumao certainly has no evidence linking that person to the murder.
He was afraid that in the end, the law would only punish him, while the true mastermind would enjoy a wealthy life, surrounded by children and grandchildren, dying of old age in peace.
He thought it over and over and resorted to his old trade—murder.
Using this clumsy scheme, using a group of innocent people as his cover, to kill.
Unfortunately, even after 22 cycles of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, even after putting on fine clothes and living in a big house, Qian Shumao was still the same reckless and foolish construction worker with little education who only knew how to follow orders.
He was never able to win in this contest against the person who played him and Zhao Yuanliang like fiddles, who used them to kill and could then turn around and threaten them.
The one who planned it all—Sun Fujing.”
