Not long after the video was posted on his social media, it received a like from a maple leaf avatar.
The maple leaf avatar was named “Still Waters Run Deep,” and the signature was “Quiet years, peaceful and prosperous times.” The avatar, ID, and signature all had very middle-aged characteristics. But Ji Xun knew that although the owner of this account was middle-aged, they were not at all “quiet and peaceful.”
Wasn’t this their bureau’s Chief Zhou, who usually could pretend to be a Buddhist in the office, but at critical moments would inevitably transform into a table-flipping Taoist, becoming like a fire-breathing dragon… Heaven knows the two of them had parted on very unhappy terms when he left the force. Or rather, it was Chief Zhou who was unilaterally unhappy with him. At that time, his mind was not on the police station at all. Afterwards, he felt that the other party must have deleted all his contact information in a fit of anger.
He didn’t expect that the other party hadn’t deleted him at all.
Not only had he not deleted him, but he might have been secretly looking at his social media for three years, and had seen his shouts when his book was published, his cries when he had writer’s block, and his groans when he stayed up all night.
Ji Xun only felt his scalp tingle.
At this moment, “Still Waters Run Deep” left a comment: “At the scene?”
Not only did Ji Xun’s scalp tingle, but his spine also tingled. He quickly cleared his name: “Just passing by, watching the fun, nothing to do with me.”
After saying this, Ji Xun no longer had the urge to use his phone. He instantly put it back in his pocket and crossed his arms to watch the fun at the scene. Actually, there wasn’t much fun to watch. Huo Ranyin had apprehended the fleeing Duan Hongwen, Wen Yangyang was with the seemingly very docile Wei Zhenzhu, and the other police officers were carrying the important spoils of this river cleaning operation—the bright blue bronze horse—and were preparing to return to the police station.
Because they were handling a case on the street, it was inevitable that all of this would be photographed and recorded. On the one hand, the police had no need to hide, and on the other hand, it was impossible to completely hide. When they left, they only reiterated to the surrounding crowd:
“The process of police enforcement can be filmed and posted, but if you edit it out of context, distort the facts, and create a rhythm on social media to cause controversy and have a negative impact, you will be held legally responsible.”
The crowd responded sporadically and, along with the police, went about their business.
As for the still dry river channel at the scene, it was left to a professional engineering team to refill with water.
Everyone returned to the police station.
Logically, the next step should have been to interrogate Duan Hongwen and Wei Zhenzhu and press their advantage. But after consideration, Huo Ranyin decided to interrogate Mo Nai at the same time. Perhaps the details obtained from both sides during the interrogation could be cross-verified to finally get the truth.
Wen Yangyang was still in charge of Wei Zhenzhu, Duan Hongwen was given to Tan Mingjiu, and Huo Ranyin was personally in charge of Mo Nai.
Tan Mingjiu simply rinsed his head with warm water at the police station. The good thing about having no hair was that he didn’t need shampoo. Before entering the interrogation room, he was still madly dissing the Liucheng prison, resentful that if they hadn’t made a mistake, the case would have been solved long ago.
He was in a bad mood, so his tone was naturally not good. And according to Zhu Huan and Wei Zhenzhu’s statements, Duan Hongwen’s personality was very susceptible to intimidation.
Tan Mingjiu: “Yo, a writer like you trying to outrun us police officers. A very naive idea. Speak up. Honestly confess why you were at Liuchu Street. Were you feeling guilty! Afraid we’d find your murder weapon! Hey—unluckily for you, we really found it.”
Duan Hongwen’s face flushed red. “I didn’t kill anyone!”
“I’m asking you what you were doing there, not if you killed someone. Do you understand Chinese? Don’t answer what you weren’t asked. Answer quickly, I’m waiting for you to tell me your thought process. Don’t beat around the bush, otherwise it will be considered a bad attitude, which affects sentence reduction, you know.”
Tan Mingjiu’s barrage of trash talk made Duan Hongwen’s head spin. He had only said one sentence and the other party had already escalated it to an attitude problem.
Rationally, Duan Hongwen felt that he was talking nonsense, but in terms of momentum, he was completely overwhelmed. He shrank his neck and answered vaguely, “I was out for a walk, and I saw a crowd, so I went over to see. It wasn’t because I was guilty.”
“You can walk from your home to here in half a day? If you said you saw someone making a fuss on your social media and got curious, that would be more believable. Do you even know how to lie? One demerit for lying. I’ll ask you again.” Tan Mingjiu slammed the table and shouted, “Why were you there!”
Duan Hongwen tried several times to muster up some courage, but in the end, he stammered:
“Friends… circle…”
“Friends circle my banana, isn’t it funny to patch up my words!”
“Why were you at Liuchu Street?” Wen Yangyang handed Wei Zhenzhu a cup of warm water, her tone very gentle. “It’s quite cold today. You must have been in the wind just now. Have some water first and we can talk slowly.”
Wei Zhenzhu thanked her in a low voice. She glanced out of the corner of her eye at the one-way mirror next to her, looking somewhat timid.
Wen Yangyang comforted her, “Don’t be afraid. This is a routine inquiry. It’s just the three of us. No one else will come.”
The recorder next to her was also a female police officer, a little older than Wen Yangyang, and also had a kind face.
Wei Zhenzhu also noticed this thoughtful arrangement. She replied in a weak voice, “My husband has been very uneasy since he came back from the police station yesterday. He walked over there after dinner last night, and he went there again after lunch today. I was following him.”
“Why did you lie about being at home on the night of the 11th? Where did you go after you left the complex at 6:30 that day, and what did you see?”
Wei Zhenzhu softly repeated the words “six-thirty” and looked up to ask, “Officer Wen, did you check the surveillance?”
“Yes.”
Wei Zhenzhu said “oh” and then apologetically, “I’m sorry I lied. I left at six-thirty that day and went to Gao Shuang’s house to follow my husband.”
“You know Gao Shuang?”
“Yes… I knew he was cheating. I followed him and found out.”
Wen Yangyang was surprised again, although this surprise was a bit of an overreaction for a woman who was domestically abused by her husband and knew that her husband wanted to kill her.
“Your husband left at around five o’clock. You didn’t follow him immediately, but went directly to Gao Shuang’s house. This means you already knew your husband would go there? This wasn’t your first time following him to Gao Shuang’s door, was it?”
Wei Zhenzhu smiled gently. “Yes, he’s been going there at this time recently. Officer Wen, you can check the phone I just handed in. It has photos of him and Gao Shuang that I took before. The passcode is my daughter’s birthday.”
__
Mo Nai sat in the chair, as silent as he had been a few days ago. Silence was his greatest coping mechanism. It was very useful, but not omnipotent.
Huo Ranyin got straight to the point. “What did you say in front of Qi Meng’s grave?”
This sentence easily shattered Mo Nai’s silence. He suddenly raised his head, his cheeks twitching, as if a worm were burrowing under his skin.
“Did you say sorry? Sorry for causing her to be r*ped? A desperate prison break just before release, just to give her a nine-year-late apology before her brother took her completely out of the country. It sounds very touching.” Huo Ranyin’s voice was like ice, tearing away Mo Nai’s fig leaf. “You, who chose to be indifferent back then, were these apologies for her, or for yourself, to seek peace of mind?”
“I…”
“The moment you successfully broke out of prison and escaped the police pursuit, you must have been secretly overjoyed. Before you escaped, you grandly thought it was just to visit her grave. After you escaped, the world was your oyster, you could go anywhere. A new life was right in front of you. What did Qi Meng matter? She was a tool in the past, and now she’s just an excuse. You want to keep running, you want freedom. Freedom is too precious. Every minute more in prison is torture—”
“I didn’t! She’s not!” Mo Nai suddenly screamed. “She’s not a tool, not an excuse, she’s a person! I came out for her!”
“Then why didn’t you turn yourself in immediately!”
“I—I still had—”
Huo Ranyin suddenly lowered his voice, as gentle as lulling him to sleep. “You still had things to do, right?”
Mo Nai’s mind went blank. The anger and anxiety of being misunderstood still lingered in his heart. He blurted out, “Yes, I have…”
Halfway through, his reason returned, and he urgently bit his tongue, which had almost revealed a secret.
Huo Ranyin looked at Mo Nai coldly, his eyes like searchlights, shining on Mo Nai’s flesh, on his bones, and even more so, shining on his soul. “You went to Zhuo Cangying and Gao Shuang’s house with a purpose. Tell me, how did you know the passcode to Gao Shuang’s backup phone?”
Ji Xun whistled. He didn’t know this clue. He said to Yuan Yue, who was also watching the interrogation beside him, “Where’s that phone? Let me see it.”
Although Yuan Yue didn’t know what phone it was either, it didn’t stop him from asking around and going through the procedures on Ji Xun’s behalf. In less than three minutes, he handed the phone to Ji Xun.
Not to mention the search history, the 999+ messages in the WeChat and QQ group chats were impossible to scroll through.
Ji Xun thought for a moment and sent a message to all the contacts in Gao Shuang’s alternate WeChat and QQ accounts: “Who is Cang Bai? Private message me if you know.”
According to Huo Ranyin, after the truth of the necrophilia was revealed, Zhu Huan flatly denied having arranged an ID card for Mo Nai. He had also never seen the handgun Mo Nai had been carrying after his prison break. He had purely taken in Mo Nai because of his connection with Zhang Xinyou.
Based on his past experience dealing with such people, Ji Xun was inclined to believe that Zhu Huan was not lying.
Since the fake ID card did not come from Zhu Huan, where it came from was an important question.
Mo Nai definitely knew Gao Shuang. Otherwise, why would he be able to so easily distinguish between the backup phone and the main phone, and know not to use the main phone to avoid being traced by the police via GPS?
Could the ID card also have been obtained through this connection with Gao Shuang?
While waiting for his guess to be verified, Ji Xun casually scrolled through the phone. There was a Kuaishou app on it, but no Weibo. There were a bunch of game apps, as well as lifestyle apps like Alipay, Meituan, and Ele.me.
Ji Xun opened Meituan. The most recent order was from a supermarket. Besides snacks, it also included some watercolor paper and sketching pencils.
It was delivered to… a certain villa in Chuncheng.
Chuncheng, the place where Mo Nai had once sent a package.
Just then, a message from a stranger in a QQ group popped up. A user with the ID “Zhan Heiheiya” said, “Qin Chaoyan, what are you trying to do again? Didn’t we break up a long time ago?”
Qin Chaoyan, this very Mary Sue-like name was Gao Shuang’s game ID.
Ji Xun picked up the microphone and said to Huo Ranyin, “Captain Huo, ask Mo Nai if he was with Gao Shuang in Chuncheng on the 9th.”
Duan Hongwen was at his wit’s end. He saw Tan Mingjiu, wearing gloves, flipping through his phone and taunting him at the same time: “Yo, you have your WeChat step counter on. Why did you go to Liuchu Street yesterday and today?”
The earlier slip of the tongue had made Duan Hongwen a little flustered. On the one hand, Duan Hongwen reminded himself to be calm, and on the other hand, he retorted, “Nonsense, I’ve already turned off my location.”
Tan Mingjiu laughed heartily. “Think again. If I had turned it off, how would I know you went to Liuchu Street yesterday? Let me tell you, WeChat’s privacy settings are not very good. You think you’ve turned it off, but you actually haven’t.”
Duan Hongwen became a little uncertain after being questioned by him. The calm he had just reminded himself of began to melt away in his mind. He thought hard.
Tan Mingjiu asked, “Think again, think again. Did you do it a long time ago and just can’t remember?”
“No way, I just turned it off recently.”
“Then did you turn it off on the 11th?”
“…”
“You killed Zhuo Cangying and were afraid of being located by the police, so you quickly turned off your phone, right?” Tan Mingjiu laughed again. “Don’t be afraid. The tech guys are already checking. They’ll definitely be able to check you thoroughly. This is a race against time now, brother. If you’re even one second late and the tech guys beat you to it, your confession won’t count, and your little life will be over. There’s no hope for life imprisonment.”
Duan Hongwen thought and thought, but couldn’t figure it out at all. He shouted in a breakdown, “Enough, I didn’t kill him. I’ll confess, I’ll confess everything. It was my wife, Wei Zhenzhu, who killed him!”
Wen Yangyang handed the printed intimate photos of Gao Shuang and Duan Hongwen to Wei Zhenzhu for confirmation. “Are these them?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me what you saw after waiting at Gao Shuang’s door?”
Wei Zhenzhu nodded. “I saw him coming back in Zhuo Cangying’s car. I was hiding in their garage at the time. There was no one in the garage, and the villa was dark, so they didn’t see me.”
Wen Yangyang asked, “When you arrived, the villa was dark. You didn’t see Gao Shuang?”
“No, her car wasn’t there, and she wasn’t there. Zhuo Cangying and Duan Hongwen turned on the lights after they went in. It was probably around seven o’clock then.”
This statement was consistent with the information the police had.
“Then since Gao Shuang wasn’t there, why did your husband go to the villa? Shouldn’t he have gone there to have a rendezvous with Gao Shuang?”
Wei Zhenzhu: “I was also wondering about that. So after they went in, I quietly walked over and hid under the living room window. I heard them sitting on the sofa and chatting. Zhuo Cangying seemed a little tired and was lying on the sofa to rest. He said to my husband that he wanted a glass of water. Just as he was about to get up, my husband picked up the ornament on the table and smashed it down. He smashed it many times, his face was ferocious and terrifying. I was scared and made a sound, and he saw me—”
Wen Yangyang let out a small gasp, seemingly also drawn into the scene by Wei Zhenzhu’s narrative. She swallowed and asked, “Then, then why didn’t you call the police at that time? Weren’t you afraid?”
Wei Zhenzhu smiled. “I don’t know. By the time I reacted, he was already in front of me. I thought I was going to die too, but he didn’t kill me. He didn’t kill me… I… I was a little grateful to him.”
Wen Yangyang couldn’t agree. “But he later wanted to hire someone to kill you!”
Wei Zhenzhu shook her head. “He didn’t kill me then, so he wouldn’t kill me later. I don’t know how to describe it, but Officer Wen, I don’t think he really wanted to kill me later. He was just trying to protect himself and didn’t want me to tell anyone that he had killed someone. Maybe he still had feelings for me.”
Wei Zhenzhu paused and then said, “But if he says I’m the murderer, then just arrest me as the murderer. Officer Wen, I didn’t call the police and I told so many lies. I’m almost like a murderer, right? Anyway… it’s all so dirty.”
The 9th, Chuncheng, Gao Shuang.
Mo Nai, who was connected to Gao Shuang, finally seemed no longer like an outsider to this case.
“Your silence is meaningless now. We have already contacted the delivery rider who delivered that takeout order. He can serve as a witness and prove in court that you and Gao Shuang knew each other.”
With a “bang!”, a loud noise echoed.
Even though his hands were restrained and the chair was welded to the floor, it was unknown how Mo Nai did it, but he actually made such a loud noise in the interrogation room.
“Why do you have to keep investigating!” Mo Nai’s face was flushed red, and he roared with fury. “Isn’t it enough that I confessed to the murder? We already have a murderer, why do you have to keep investigating!”
The police officer who was recording the interrogation with Huo Ranyin was startled and his hand instantly went to the gun on his waist.
Huo Ranyin did not move.
He didn’t even raise an eyebrow.
There was no emotion on his face, only a pair of deep eyes that looked at the tormented Mo Nai with contempt, as if the pain on Mo Nai’s face were as fake as paper.
“You want to pay with your life?” Huo Ranyin smiled lightly. “Are you worthy?”
