“Bobo, skipping class again?” One of Fu Bo’s roommates finished packing his bag. “We’re leaving, then. Whether we can answer attendance for you depends on luck.”
Fu Bo lay on his bed and replied weakly, “All right. I’ll buy you guys milk tea tonight.”
As soon as his roommates left, Fu Bo quickly climbed out of bed, stared anxiously at his phone for a while, grabbed his bag, and headed straight off campus. A tree-lined road connected the school gate to the nearest bus stop. The leaves had already turned yellow and carpeted the ground. Fu Bo was walking along when a car suddenly stopped in front of him. He froze. The door opened, and Chen Zheng got out.
Fu Bo immediately tensed and stood rooted to the spot.
Chen Zheng approached and tilted his chin toward the school. “No class? Heading out this early?”
Fu Bo said, “What do you want now?”
“Skipping class?”
Irritation entered Fu Bo’s face. “What’s it to you?”
“Your grandfather tells everyone your grades are good and that you study especially hard.” Chen Zheng watched Fu Bo’s expression as he spoke. “Today he even lent your high-school textbooks to an acquaintance. I doubt he knows you regularly skip class at university.”
Fu Bo’s face turned dark red, and his voice shook slightly. “Y-you went to see my grandfather?”
“Correction. I didn’t ‘go to see’ him. I happened to meet him during canvassing.” Chen Zheng said, “Wu Junqian’s body was found on Xuebu Mountain. Of course we’re canvassing Xuebu Village. Do you think this is specifically about you?”
Fu Bo could not meet Chen Zheng’s eyes. He turned his face away and said nothing.
Although classes were in session, university schedules and management were nothing like those of secondary school, and students still passed by now and then. The more curious ones inevitably looked their way. Chen Zheng casually glanced around. “Standing here means you might run into people you know. Why don’t you get in the car?”
Fu Bo clenched his fist, clearly unwilling. But when he looked up and saw a student from his department turning the corner, he immediately yanked open the rear door and slammed it shut.
“Where are you taking me?” Once the car began moving, Fu Bo looked half relieved and half even more burdened. “Can’t we just talk in the car?”
“In your situation, it would be better to go to the station and make a formal statement,” Chen Zheng said.
Fu Bo fell silent, his whole body like a spark about to explode. Chen Zheng did not speak to him again. Occasionally, he glanced in the rearview mirror, and every time, his gaze met Fu Bo’s. Fu Bo was studying him but afraid of being caught, and his reactions were not quick enough to hide it.
Chen Zheng thought this was not a difficult kid to deal with.
In the interview room, all the lights and recording equipment were switched on. Chen Zheng said, “Sit.”
Fu Bo sat down awkwardly and looked around.
“When I questioned you about Wu Junqian, you concealed an important fact,” Chen Zheng said. “Your family home is in Xuebu Village.”
“I wasn’t deliberately hiding it!” Fu Bo protested anxiously. “I moved out with my mom years ago. I haven’t gone back in forever! What does Xuebu Village have to do with me?”
“But your textbooks from the first half of this year are in Xuebu Village.”
“My grandfather came to see me during summer vacation and took them!” Fu Bo had a quick temper and was relatively fragile. Once he grew agitated, his eyes reddened and tears began to fall. “I got into university and my grandfather was happy. He kept saying no one in the Fu family had ever gone to university and hardly anyone from Xuebu Village had either. That day he brought me a ton of things. I happened to be clearing out my high-school textbooks to sell. He wouldn’t let me sell them and insisted on keeping all of them. I actually… I actually don’t like my grandfather very much. I thought his nagging was annoying, so I let him take everything.”
Fu Bo cried as he said, “I have nothing to do with Xuebu Village, and I don’t know why Wu Junqian died there!”
“Tell me the truth,” Chen Zheng said. “When I told you we found Wu Junqian’s body on Xuebu Mountain, did it really never occur to you that it was your family’s home village?”
“I…” Fu Bo could not answer for a long time. The recording officer looked at Chen Zheng. Chen Zheng only watched Fu Bo and did not press him.
Several minutes later, Fu Bo’s shoulders gradually slumped. In a very low voice, he said, “I did think of it. That’s why I was scared.”
“What were you afraid of?”
“You already suspected me. I cyberbullied Wu Junqian, and on the day she disappeared, I followed her. Now she’s dead on the mountain behind my home village. You… you’d definitely decide I was the killer!” Fu Bo said desperately. “But I didn’t kill anyone! I really didn’t know where she went after we left Huandie!”
Only after his emotions settled slightly did Chen Zheng say, “Do you understand that by hiding this connection, you made yourself look even more suspicious once I learned Xuebu Village was your family home?”
Fu Bo hugged his arms. “I… what was I supposed to do?”
“If I were thinking like the killer, I might conclude that someone understands how police reason. Perhaps one reason they chose Xuebu Mountain was because your family came from Xuebu Village. They expected you to hide that fact.” Chen Zheng said, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Not only Fu Bo, even the recording officer did not immediately follow. Chen Zheng gave him time. Then Fu Bo sucked in a sharp breath. “Who the hell is framing me?”
“I don’t know,” Chen Zheng said. “But you may have clues about them.”
Fu Bo looked completely lost. “I don’t! I don’t even know who you’re talking about!”
Chen Zheng held out a hand. “Give me your phone.”
Fu Bo’s first reaction was, naturally, refusal. For a modern person, a phone was almost a second self. No one willingly handed over that second self and allowed someone else to pry through it.
Chen Zheng did not rush him. He patiently explained, “We suspect someone guided Wu Junqian into doing something at the café that violated the rules of your fandom, and also guided you and Chen Wen into retaliating against her. You were all swept up by emotion and never noticed this person’s existence. You only saw Wu Junqian as the one who had offended you, then kept inflaming one another.”
Fu Bo clenched his teeth. He disliked police and was afraid of them, but he had to admit the officer in front of him was different from what he had imagined and was saying something that resonated with thoughts he himself had had.
“You can’t think of who this person is, but your phone may contain clues,” Chen Zheng said, his gaze becoming serious. “You don’t know what those clues mean. So give it to me. I’ll find them.”
Fu Bo’s lips moved several times. He was wavering, whether from fear or from an inexplicable trust that had begun growing toward Chen Zheng. “I’m not the killer. Really.” He looked at Chen Zheng, aggrieved. At that moment, he finally looked eighteen, still not entirely separated from childhood, instinctively depending on an adult who appeared reliable.
“Then let me find the evidence,” Chen Zheng said.
Fu Bo handed over his phone, and Chen Zheng immediately checked the social-media apps. The call-out post Chen Wen had published had been written mainly by Fu Bo and Li An. Their own accounts had also been particularly active in the replies, where they openly identified themselves as participants in the café. As a result, Fu Bo had received not only a huge number of comments but also an enormous volume of private messages.
The call-out post had later been deleted, and the comments beneath it vanished as well, but the private messages sent directly to Fu Bo were all still there.
Chen Zheng turned the phone over to the technical investigation team and waited while they analyzed the data. Apart from the original platform, Fu Bo had also received large numbers of private messages on the other three platforms where they had called out Wu Junqian. The overwhelming majority either cursed Wu Junqian, comforted him, or encouraged him to keep going after her until she was finished. A very small number of more rational users urged him to stop before things went too far. What if Wu Junqian became suicidal, or sued them for defamation? Then the whole thing would become difficult to control.
Among the enormous volume of material, the technical team identified fourteen suspicious accounts matching Chen Zheng’s theory. They showed an exceptional ability to empathize with Fu Bo, repeatedly agreeing that Wu Junqian’s behavior was unforgivable and constituted a complete exploitation of Super Fox. Fu Bo became increasingly indignant under their influence. The private-message exchanges made it obvious that their attitudes had infected him.
What was noteworthy was that none of these accounts ever suggested what Fu Bo should do next. Other accounts were the ones screaming that Wu Junqian should die. The suspicious users hid their own intentions, offering nothing but empathy. Once Fu Bo’s anger reached its peak, other people would naturally appear to light the fuse.
The accounts shared another characteristic: their profile pages were almost completely blank. They did not resemble genuine Super Fox fans at all. Even the ones that had reposted one or two related items had obviously done so merely for show. Fu Bo would never have noticed. At the time, he had been processing huge numbers of comments and private messages and had no time to inspect anyone’s profile.
The technical investigation officer sighed. “There’s one problem. We found the accounts, but we can’t find the people behind them. They used relay servers and compromised machines. Every IP address leads overseas.”
“Thanks. This is enough,” Chen Zheng said.
The officer looked confused. “What good does it do if we can’t find the person?”
“It proves the direction wasn’t wrong. Someone was using Fu Bo, Chen Wen, and the others.”
Meanwhile, it took Ming Han some time to get the platform operators to restore deleted data, and even then, the recovery was incomplete. But now that Chen Zheng’s side had narrowed the target, they knew what to focus on and recovered some of the public replies left by accounts that had privately messaged Fu Bo. Their public comments matched the private messages almost exactly and had received large numbers of likes.
Even the platform operators, however, could not penetrate the layered relays to identify the person hiding at the center.
“One side is confirmed,” Ming Han said. “Now we need the other. They approached Fu Bo and Chen Wen online, but that doesn’t mean they used the same method to approach Wu Junqian.”
“Wu Junqian had plenty of opportunities to be influenced online too,” Chen Zheng said. “She livestreamed frequently and interacted with viewers.”
“I checked that while I was at it.” Ming Han did not mention how tedious the work had been and gave only the conclusion. “So far, no suspicious accounts.”
Chen Zheng was mildly surprised by Ming Han’s efficiency. Then he thought about it. Ming Han might usually look unserious, but he was still the leader of one of the Mobile Unit’s small teams. His ability was never in question.
“What are you planning to do next?”
“Fuhua Police Station’s original review of surveillance and communications after Wu Junqian disappeared wasn’t complete. It hasn’t even been three months, so most footage hasn’t been overwritten yet. I’m going to redo that part. I’ll also take another look at Huang Li.” Ming Han asked, “What about you?”
Chen Zheng walked over to the clue wall. At first, it had contained only clues from the “Zeng Yan” case. Then the questions and related people multiplied, the web grew larger and larger, and now there was almost no room left to write.
Chen Zheng’s gaze settled on Wei Youtai’s name. “Our attention got pulled away by the new case, and he and Ke Shuer have faded into the background. We still can’t find Hao Le’s body, but instead we found Wu Junqian’s. The investigative focus changed, and the ‘Zeng Yan’ and Wu Junqian cases were merged. Does that benefit them?”
“But neither of them had a motive to kill ‘Zeng Yan’ in the first place.” Ming Han stood diagonally behind Chen Zheng. “When we discussed motive back then, it was already vague and impossible to settle. Silencing witnesses was only a relatively reasonable inference, but if either Ke Shuer or Wei Youtai really wanted to silence ‘Zeng Yan,’ there’s no way they wouldn’t have discovered she was no longer the Zeng Yan they knew. Besides, finding Hao Le’s body would actually benefit them more. It could prove they weren’t lying, and the burial site or bones might still contain evidence that Feng Feng killed him. I can’t see how the body remaining missing helps them.”
Chen Zheng sank into thought. Ming Han’s analysis was rational and objective, yet Chen Zheng still felt something had been missed, especially with Wei Youtai. The story about Hao Le tutoring Feng Feng had come from Wei Youtai. Wei seemed to want police to believe him, so he supplied a great deal of detail. But would Feng Feng truly have told him all of that?
“We can follow your idea in another direction,” Ming Han said. “Hao Le’s body is still missing, but Wu Junqian’s was found. Compare Wu Junqian’s body with ‘Zeng Yan’s,’ and it looks like the same killer. Ke Shuer and Wei Youtai gradually disappear from view. In that case, there’s at least a slight possibility that the person guiding Fu Bo online is one of them.”
“We still need to work from online activity and communications,” Chen Zheng said.
Ming Han checked the time. “I’m going to the Weiming flagship store and getting their surveillance first.”
But before Ming Han could leave, Chen Zheng received a call. “Director Chen, something happened at Weiming! We just arrived and found out the manager, Huang Li, is missing!”
Chen Zheng ran downstairs and stopped Ming Han. When Ming Han heard, he too frowned. “We saw her last night and immediately afterward she disappeared?”
“I suspect something will be wrong with the store surveillance. Go there now.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to her home!”
Chen Zheng stepped hard on the accelerator. Over the phone, Beiye Sub-bureau investigators told him what they currently knew. They had checked both the flagship store and branches the day before but obtained nothing useful. Today, from Xuebu Village, Kong Bing remotely ordered them to return and question every employee individually. When they reached the flagship store, members of the Wu family were packed inside, saying manager Huang Li had run off. Several other employees had also failed to come to work, and the shop could no longer operate at all.
Chen Zheng had expected the day before that Weiming might not survive, but he had not expected Huang Li to disappear. He immediately called Xiao Dan. Xiao Dan was extremely nervous and had already received a call from investigators earlier.
“Don’t panic. Do you know where Huang Li lives?” Chen Zheng asked.
“I mailed something for her before. W-wait! It was… it was Silu Street!”
Silu Street? Wasn’t that where Weiming’s first store had been?
Chen Zheng was already near Xiao Dan’s home. Xiao Dan ran outside in a panic. “Officer Chen, I’ll go with you!”
They passed Weiming’s first store on Silu Street and reached a group of old factory-worker apartment buildings. This was where Huang Li lived.
Huang Li earned a decent income, had neither elderly parents nor children to support, and could easily have afforded a home in one of Zhuquan City’s mid-range residential complexes. Yet she lived in old staff housing that once belonged to a factory. The factory itself had disappeared long ago. The apartment buildings were decades old and now mostly rented to workers who had recently arrived in the city.
The address Xiao Dan remembered included only the building and unit, not the apartment number. Chen Zheng asked several elderly people playing cards downstairs. They said, “Huang Li? That building. Fifth floor, left side. Go up the stairs and it’s the one right there.”
Chen Zheng knocked. No one answered. Calls to Huang Li’s phone went straight to a powered-off message. The doors in these old buildings were made of iron, and striking the metal panel outside produced an enormous sound. The neighboring door opened, and someone stuck their head out. “Looking for Xiao Li? She’s busy with work. She’s never home during the day.”
The neighbor seemed fond of chatting, so Chen Zheng simply asked about Huang Li.
“That child has had a hard life.” The neighbor explained that the Huang family had always been honest, ordinary people. Huang Li’s parents had both worked at the old factory. After it closed, they took odd jobs wherever they could find them. Huang Li had done very well in school and originally could have gone to university outside the city, but the family simply could not afford it. Somehow, she ended up learning pastry-making and eventually opened a shop.
When the shop first opened, all the neighbors went to support her. But pastries cost too much compared with steamed buns and mantou, and ordinary people could not afford them often. Whenever a neighborhood child had a birthday, however, Huang Li would bring over a cake. It might have been small, but the gesture mattered.
Just as life seemed about to improve, both of her parents fell ill one after the other. The neighbor spoke with deep empathy. They had all been workers who labored most of their lives, suffered in the factory when they were young, lost their jobs in middle age, then struggled from place to place to make a living. Before they ever had a chance to enjoy life, they developed illnesses that could not be cured.
During that period, Huang Li lost a great deal of weight. She had to manage her shop and care for her parents. Even though she knew they only had a few months left, she poured every cent she could find into treatment, desperate to keep them with her a little longer.
Everyone could guess how it ended. Her parents died, leaving Huang Li buried under debt.
The neighbor sighed. Huang Li sold her shop to repay what she owed. Afterward, she never opened another business and worked for others instead.
But then the neighbor added, “Xiao Li has had some luck too. Working for someone else may be exhausting, but at least it’s stable. She’s doing well now. Her parents can rest easy.”
Chen Zheng thought that if Huang Li’s parents were watching from somewhere, their hearts would probably be lodged in their throats right now.
Chen Zheng still did not have authorization to enter the apartment and could not force the lock without permission. But Huang Li’s whereabouts would determine the next stage of the investigation. He called Ming Han. “How is it there? Find her?”
“No, but Huang Li definitely has a problem,” Ming Han said. “All of Weiming’s surveillance footage has been deleted.”
“Deleted?” Chen Zheng immediately understood. “Huang Li did it?”
“Yes. The Wu family is tearing itself apart over it. Bro, prepare to enter the apartment on your side.”
Chen Zheng wasted not a single minute. He immediately contacted Silu Street Police Station, which could reach them fastest. While he waited, Ming Han gave him a general account of what had happened at Weiming.
As flagship-store manager, Huang Li had every permission within the store’s system. When Wu Junqian’s body was first found, the Wu family was drowning in grief and had no energy to pay attention to the individual stores. But after a day, Li Luo and the others had recovered somewhat. And because police had begun asking about Wu Junqian’s relationships with her employees, the commercially experienced Wu family immediately realized the killer might have been one of the staff.
So early that morning, family members went to the different stores. Their first goal was to reclaim all management authority, and their second was to test the employees. Yet Huang Li, whose relationship with Wu Junqian had been the most complicated, had disappeared. One employee said police had spoken with Huang Li the night before and Huang Li’s reaction had been strange. After police left, Huang Li told everyone else to go home first. No one knew what she did alone inside the shop afterward.
The Wu family immediately sensed something was wrong and pulled up the surveillance. Footage that should have gone back at least three months was completely blank. Nothing remained.
When Ming Han arrived, Li Luo said furiously, “Huang Li must have killed Qianqian! Why else would she disappear? Why would she delete the surveillance?”
There was no evidence yet that Huang Li had personally deleted the footage. But everyone there believed no one else would choose precisely this moment to wipe the recordings and then vanish.
Ming Han took several Beiye Sub-bureau investigators around neighboring businesses to collect private surveillance and then went to the local police station for public street-camera footage. Huang Li appeared several times, and every time she looked extremely anxious.
The previous night, she had not left Weiming until 11:50 p.m., much later than her normal finishing time. Employees said she only stayed that late for important store events or when adjusting a product. Clearly neither applied the previous night. Why she remained so long was unknown.
Li Luo was convinced Huang Li had been deleting surveillance, but Ming Han was not sure. At 3:20 a.m., Huang Li appeared on nearby cameras again. She had changed her clothes and hairstyle, put on a mask, and repeatedly looked behind herself.
At 4:07 a.m., she left Weiming again.
“She went home once,” Chen Zheng said. “Staying at Weiming until nearly midnight may have been fear and hesitation. Between midnight and three, something happened to her, or she finally made a decision. The footage was probably deleted during that later visit.”
Ming Han had reached the same conclusion. “She’s the manager. She knows exactly what area every camera in the store covers. Logically, she shouldn’t be afraid of some secret of hers being recorded. She knows the cameras too well. Deleting all the footage does the opposite. It guarantees police will focus on her.”
“Once the footage is gone, it becomes much harder to follow our original plan and identify suspicious people who may have appeared around Wu Junqian. Was she helping this person?” Chen Zheng said. “And after helping them? She’s in danger.”
The sub-bureau had already begun searching for Huang Li, while the Wu family used its own connections and insisted on finding her at any cost. But even knowing she might be in danger did not mean they could locate her immediately.
“She could only delete footage from this one store,” Ming Han said. “Wu Junqian didn’t spend that much time at the flagship store in the first place. Before disappearing, she visited Branch Four most often. And we still need to examine surveillance around Wu Junqian’s home. Huang Li can’t delete any of that.”
“Maybe what she wanted erased had nothing to do with Wu Junqian.”
Ming Han paused. “Then it has nothing to do with our theory either.”
By then, Huang Li’s apartment had been opened. Seeing police arrive, many residents came out to watch and began talking among themselves.
“Did something happen to Xiao Li? Why are you opening her home?”
“Don’t bully Xiao Li! She may be alone now, but we neighbors won’t just stand by if someone mistreats her!”
Chen Zheng had visited countless scenes and heard far more cold, cutting remarks than kind ones. Hearing the neighbors defend Huang Li this fiercely made him think that, at least in their eyes, Huang Li had to be a genuinely kind person.
The Huang family apartment was relatively spacious, but most of the furnishings were old. The valuable items were all in the kitchen, which contained all kinds of baking equipment. On the living-room table, Chen Zheng found a letter.
It was Huang Li’s suicide note.
The note contained very little. It simply asked the neighbors who came inside to dispose of everything in the apartment, give her money and property to the neighborhood committee, and accept her thanks for looking after her over the years.
Her handwriting was not beautiful, but it was neat. The paper lay flat, marked only by a single fold. She had written the suicide note while completely clearheaded. There were no melodramatic traces of tears soaking the page.
Chen Zheng tightened his grip around the letter. Several seconds later, he ran downstairs.