Wu Lianshan raised her head, her face haggard. “…What did Wu Ye tell you?”
Chen Zheng asked, “You care that much about what he said?”
After a moment, Wu Lianshan said, “I saw his sister.”
“You know his sister?” Chen Zheng asked unhurriedly.
Instead, Wu Lianshan lost patience. “You already brought his sister here to see him. Why keep dancing around the subject with me?”
“Dancing around it?” Chen Zheng remained composed. “If what you want to know is whether he implicated you, I can tell you that he did.”
Wu Lianshan’s neck immediately tightened, her upper body turning extremely rigid.
“But I’m talking to you now, and I’m more interested in what you’ll say.” Chen Zheng said, “Of the three victims, the only one you truly wanted dead was the current fake Zeng Yan, wasn’t she? The other two were only practice for Wu Ye.”
Wu Lianshan stared at him in astonishment, as if unable to understand how he had even seen through that.
Chen Zheng placed Zhu Lingjuan’s old photograph in front of Wu Lianshan again. “She wasn’t one of the drug traffickers who directly caused your parents’ deaths, but she was a member of Heiyong too. Of the people from back then, everyone except her was either shot dead or sentenced. She alone disappeared before danger reached her. Of course, she didn’t end well either. An informant killed her. But her daughter survived, and she lived quite well.”
Wu Lianshan began trembling, tiny sounds escaping her mouth. Her body seemed to be warning Chen Zheng not to continue, but Chen Zheng ignored the warning.
“You couldn’t tolerate the daughter of an enemy living a carefree, ordinary life. What you could tolerate even less was that this person replaced your friend. Zeng Yan was the only friend you made in Zhuquan City.” As he spoke, Chen Zheng abruptly tossed something onto the table. Old beads struck the surface with a dull series of knocks.
The moment Wu Lianshan saw it clearly, she cried out. It was a blue-green sweater necklace. Time had darkened its colors, draining away its old vitality until it looked like leaves rotting in a rainstorm.
Chen Zheng picked up the necklace and held it before Wu Lianshan’s eyes. “Ten years ago, you didn’t only know Zeng Yan. You also knew the person who replaced her.”
Wu Lianshan shook her head violently.
“You made a friend in Zhuquan City and were very happy. You gave Zeng Yan a sweater necklace, and she liked it so much she wore it all the time,” Chen Zheng said. “You were that close, yet when Zeng Yan suddenly withdrew from school, you showed no concern whatsoever and immediately left. I couldn’t make sense of it. Unless…”
Chen Zheng paused, his voice sharpening. “Zeng Yan’s disappearance had something to do with you. You didn’t leave. You ran.”
Wu Lianshan screamed and reached for the sweater necklace with both hands. Chen Zheng released it. As it fell, Wu Lianshan snatched it desperately into her arms and began sobbing.
Chen Zheng could see she was close to breaking. For the sake of revenge, she had drawn out an enormously long battle line. She had believed herself iron-hearted and indestructible. But when the police proved more patient than she was resilient, the defenses she had built out of cruelty and cold blood began collapsing piece by piece.
After a moment, Chen Zheng asked, “At the turn from winter to spring ten years ago, you caused the death of your good friend Zeng Yan.”
Watching from the monitor, Kong Bing sucked in a breath. “How did he figure that out?”
Ming Han stood beside him with his arms folded. He remained silent for half a minute before saying, “He didn’t figure it out. He eliminated every other answer. What remained was the only explanation.”
No one knew how hard Wu Lianshan was pulling at the sweater necklace, or perhaps the emotions boiling through her body could only be released this way. She actually snapped it apart. Beads fell like muddy tears.
“She wasn’t Zeng Yan. She didn’t deserve to be,” Wu Lianshan whispered.
Chen Zheng asked, “What was her name?”
“Xiao Qian.”
“Xiao Qian?”
“She said that was the name that woman gave her.”
When Wu Lianshan was very young, she did not understand why people bullied her. She had no parents. Shouldn’t a child without parents be protected even more? By the time the bullying became severe enough that she had to leave school, she was sick of everything connected to school.
Her grandmother brought her to Zhuquan City. Since the stall was initially set up near No. 2 Middle School and catered to students, even seeing it made Wu Lianshan uncomfortable. Back then, she rarely accompanied her grandmother to the stall and often wandered nearby alone. Being bullied had long since taught her to avoid danger and seek safety. Whenever she saw No. 2 Middle School students, she took another route.
But one day, a heavily made-up girl blocked her path. The girl had dramatically permed hair, and smoky eye makeup almost completely obscured the natural shape of her eyes. She looked like a delinquent at first glance. Wu Lianshan was frightened and tried to leave, but the girl grabbed her hood. Wu Lianshan nearly burst into tears and pleaded carefully, “Big Sister, please let me go. I won’t get in your way again.”
“What are you even talking about?” The girl looked speechless. “Do you know your pants are stained?”
“What?” Wu Lianshan asked in confusion.
The girl looked as though she had discovered something novel and entertaining. “Have you never had your period before?”
Wu Lianshan froze. She really had never had her period, but that did not mean she did not know what one was.
No wonder I feel awful today. My stomach hurts. Could it be…
Her face immediately burned red. The girl laughed happily, with a hint of teasing. Wu Lianshan had no idea what to do. Suddenly, the girl took off her coat and tossed it to her. “Come on. Big Sister will teach you.”
Wu Lianshan genuinely had no idea what to do and somehow ended up bringing the girl home in a daze. But the shabby rental apartment did not even have sanitary pads. Once the girl confirmed this was her first period, she took one from her own bag. “Know how to use it?”
“…”
“Forget it. Watch.”
Wu Lianshan changed into clean pants and used the thing she had only ever seen in advertisements for the first time. The girl went back out and bought her a whole bag of sanitary pads. Deeply grateful, Wu Lianshan wanted her to stay for dinner, but the girl said disdainfully, “My family works in food. You think I care about eating yours?”
Wu Lianshan asked, “Then… what’s your name?”
The girl wrote it on a piece of paper: Zeng Yan. When she finished, she frowned and said with disgust, “I don’t like my surname.”
“Why?” Wu Lianshan could not help asking.
Zeng Yan did not answer and left impatiently.
But after that, Zeng Yan began appearing frequently. Wu Lianshan also started paying attention to the students at No. 2 Middle School and learned that Zeng Yan was not a good student. She was always mixed up with boys who liked fighting.
“Why don’t you go to class?” Once they grew familiar, Wu Lianshan was no longer afraid of Zeng Yan. To everyone else, Zeng Yan was an irredeemable delinquent girl. To Wu Lianshan, she was the older sister who had helped her through her first period.
“What business is it of yours?” Zeng Yan said. “Why don’t you go to school?”
Wu Lianshan told her the truth. Zeng Yan became furious. “What kind of people are they? Transfer here. I’ll have your back. Let’s see who dares bully you then.”
Wu Lianshan knew transferring was impossible. She told Zeng Yan about herself and also wanted to ask about Zeng Yan’s family. At first Zeng Yan refused to say anything, but perhaps she eventually grew tired of being asked and said she would take Wu Lianshan somewhere.
They arrived at a construction site. Wu Lianshan asked in confusion, “What is this place?”
Zeng Yan dropped a bombshell. “My dad killed someone who lived here. Maybe her daughter too. My dad’s a murderer.”
Wu Lianshan almost collapsed onto the ground from fright.
Hatred and resentment surfaced in Zeng Yan’s eyes. “Why did I have to get a father like that? I’d rather not have one. He might as well die.”
Wu Lianshan took a moment to recover. “Who did your dad kill? Why?”
“I don’t know. He’s just a bastard. Every relative in our family hates him. He may have killed my mom too. What right does someone like him have to tell me to work hard and make something of myself?”
Whenever Zeng Yan talked about the environment she grew up in, she overflowed with hostility and blamed every misfortune in her life on her father, Zeng Qun.
“I just want to piss him off! Piss him off until he dies!” Zeng Yan said that she had not always been this way. Once, she too had been a good child. But one year in primary school, she discovered that her father frequently went to Miaoping Street and visited a cold-dish stall run by a woman. The woman was beautiful and had a daughter around Zeng Yan’s age. Zeng Yan was still little then and thought Zeng Qun wanted to find her a new mother. She cried bitterly. But Zeng Qun told her something like that would never happen.
A few months later, Zeng Qun stopped going to Miaoping Street, and the woman who lived in the alley disappeared too. Zeng Yan did not know what had happened, but she watched Zeng Qun grow more cheerful by the day. He often made cold dishes for her. Their family had always sold cold dishes and she had long since grown tired of them, but Zeng Qun happily told her that what he was making now was different. It was her mother’s recipe.
She tried it, and it really was delicious. But that only made her think Zeng Qun was even more of a bastard. Her mother had been gone for so long, and only now he remembered how she had made cold dishes?
When she got older, Zeng Yan heard plenty of gossip. Combined with what she already knew about Zeng Qun’s past, a terrifying possibility occurred to her: her father had killed someone.
She asked Zeng Qun about it. He had been drinking and was in high spirits, and he suddenly burst into loud laughter. “I got my revenge! I got my revenge!” But when she asked what revenge he meant, he refused to explain.
From then on, she saw Zeng Qun as a monster. What right did a monster have to demand that his daughter study hard and improve herself? The more Zeng Qun told her to do well in school, the more determined she became to do the opposite. While still very young, she began wearing makeup and hanging around boys. In ruining herself, she tasted the thrill of revenge.
Wu Lianshan still had little ability to distinguish right from wrong then. To her, Zeng Yan was a good person, so whatever Zeng Yan said had to be right. Zeng Yan rebelling against her father this way seemed incredibly cool to Wu Lianshan.
But Zeng Yan would not let Wu Lianshan appear in front of her classmates. When Wu Lianshan asked why, Zeng Yan said smugly, “You’re such a little country bumpkin. If they knew I treated you like my little sister, they’d laugh at me.”
That winter, Hao Le fell from the cliff, and Zeng Yan stopped associating with Feng Feng and the others. When Wu Lianshan heard, she was even happy. Now Zeng Yan would only have her to spend time with. By then, Zeng Qun had already been diagnosed with a serious illness and did not have long to live. Zeng Yan showed no sadness whatsoever. Near the end of winter, she suddenly asked Wu Lianshan to go to Xuebu Mountain with her.
“What are we going there for?” Wu Lianshan asked.
Zeng Yan became unusually serious. “I want to see whether he’s still in there.”
“He” meant Hao Le. Zeng Yan wanted to check the state of the body. Wu Lianshan was frightened, but she still went with Zeng Yan. The mountain was so quiet it felt as though only the two of them existed. To avoid being seen, they did not enter until evening. By the time they reached the burial site, night had fallen.
Zeng Yan cried out. The grave pit was completely empty. The body was gone.
The dark forest was eerie and terrifying. Both girls panicked badly and lost their sense of direction, wandering for most of the night as if trapped in an endless ghostly loop, unable to find the way down the mountain. Worse still, they discovered they were not alone in the woods. Someone was following them.
“Could there be ghosts?” Wu Lianshan began to cry.
Zeng Yan had long since lost her composure too. Holding Wu Lianshan’s hand, she searched blindly for a way out.
Suddenly, the person following them appeared and charged with a knife. Neither girl saw who the black silhouette was. They split up and ran for their lives.
By pure accident, Wu Lianshan found a dilapidated building and rushed inside to hide. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. When it finally quieted, she suddenly heard someone’s voice.
“Who are you?”
There was someone in here.
A face emerged from the darkness. It belonged to a girl older than Wu Lianshan, around Zeng Yan’s age. Wu Lianshan was so terrified she nearly lost her mind and kept retreating toward the corner.
The girl crouched in front of her and said her name was Xiao Qian. She had come up the mountain for her own reasons and would not hurt Wu Lianshan. Wu Lianshan’s mind was completely blank. She tried to explain that she and Zeng Yan had encountered a killer, but could barely speak coherently, babbling alternately about ghosts and murderers. Xiao Qian soothed her and said they should wait a little longer. If nothing happened, they would go out and look for Zeng Yan.
Before long, there was movement outside the door. Someone was approaching. Wu Lianshan’s heart climbed into her throat. She was certain the person who had chased them had found her. Feeling around desperately, she picked up a stone larger than her head and hid behind the door. Xiao Qian raised a wooden club too.
The door opened with a creak. Cold wind swept in and made Wu Lianshan shudder, like the gust raised by Death swinging a scythe. She did not dare look at who had entered. She brought the stone down with all her strength.
A body crashed heavily to the ground without even managing to cry for help.
Only then did Wu Lianshan see that the person twitching in the pool of blood was Zeng Yan.
She had killed her friend with her own hands.
Zeng Yan convulsed only a few times before becoming completely still. Xiao Qian looked at her and said, “You killed someone.”
Wu Lianshan had lost all ability to think. Xiao Qian patted her shoulder. “I can help you hide it, but you have to promise me something.”
Wu Lianshan asked mechanically, “What?”
“Leave Zhuquan City as soon as possible. You don’t want to go to prison, do you?” Xiao Qian was unnaturally calm. Many years later, Wu Lianshan finally understood why.
After dawn, Wu Lianshan left Xuebu Mountain alone. She had told her grandmother beforehand that she would be staying with a friend, so Granny Wu noticed nothing unusual. That same day, Wu Lianshan said she wanted to go home. Granny Wu assumed she missed school and quickly wrapped up their affairs in Zhuquan City before taking her back to Yafu City.
Almost simultaneously, Zeng Qun went to Zeng Yan’s school and withdrew her. Xiao Qian became “Zeng Yan.”
After returning to Yafu City, Wu Lianshan desperately tried to forget that nightmarish evening. She forced herself to become stronger, like Zeng Yan. After pretending long enough, she almost began to believe it herself. No one around her bullied her anymore.
The year she took the college entrance examination, she suddenly wanted badly to return to Zhuquan City. Just as Zeng Yan had once wanted to go back to Xuebu Mountain to confirm what had happened to Hao Le’s body, Wu Lianshan wanted to know what had ultimately been done with Zeng Yan’s body.
But wanting to do something and actually doing it were different matters. When she first arrived at the health college, she did not dare ask about Zeng Yan at all and deeply regretted choosing to study in Zhuquan City. To stop herself from thinking about those chaotic memories, she threw herself endlessly into school and off-campus activities. But one day, she still heard news about “Zeng Yan.”
A classmate said there was a distinctive cold-dish stall outside Fengshu Residential Complex. The food was served on skewers, and the owner was named Zeng Yan.
It was as though a hand had seized Wu Lianshan and dragged her back into the nightmare of the past. Her classmate called her several times before she came back to herself.
Zeng Yan? Big Sister? She didn’t die?
She secretly went to Fengshu Residential Complex. At the cold-dish stall, she saw a familiar-looking woman. People passing by called the woman “Yanzi” and “Zeng Yan,” but Wu Lianshan knew this was not Zeng Yan.
It was Xiao Qian.
The girl who had mysteriously appeared on Xuebu Mountain and offered to help dispose of the body had grown up and somehow stolen Zeng Yan’s name and life.
Wu Lianshan could not understand how Xiao Qian had done it. Had Zeng Qun not realized his daughter had been replaced? Even if Zeng Qun was gravely ill at the time, surely he could distinguish Zeng Yan from a complete stranger. Wu Lianshan was overwhelmed by confusion and fled. Once she calmed down, a possibility that chilled her to the bone emerged.
Xiao Qian had never been helping her conceal anything. Both she and Zeng Qun had fallen into Xiao Qian’s trap. Xiao Qian’s goal from the beginning had been to replace Zeng Yan. Otherwise, why had that stone been sitting right beside the door where Wu Lianshan could pick it up? It seemed almost deliberately placed there, waiting for her hand. Wu Lianshan had been too young and terrified to understand the implications. She had become Xiao Qian’s accomplice far too easily.
But why did Xiao Qian want to replace Zeng Yan? Who exactly was she?
Wu Lianshan could no longer live peacefully. Every morning when she opened her eyes, she thought of Xiao Qian. Every night when she slept, she dreamed of Zeng Yan and that nightmare on the mountain. She had to meet Xiao Qian and ask exactly what had happened.
Last year, they met. Xiao Qian was square dancing, and Wu Lianshan joined in. This was much earlier than the time she initially gave the police. When Xiao Qian recognized her, fear flashed through her eyes before being quickly hidden by a smile. After the dance, they talked about the lives they had lived over the years.
Xiao Qian told her that after Zeng Yan died, Zeng Qun soon became so ill he could no longer recognize people. She took the opportunity to impersonate Zeng Yan and win his trust. Continuing to attend school would inevitably create unnecessary problems, so she had Zeng Qun process the withdrawal. After Zeng Qun died, she naturally inherited everything that had originally belonged to Zeng Yan.
“Before I met you two, I wandered everywhere. I had nowhere I came from and no future. Isn’t this perfect for everyone? I got an identity, ‘Zeng Yan’ is still alive, and you didn’t kill anyone.”
At those words, Wu Lianshan’s stomach churned violently. Even as gullible as she could be, she heard the problems immediately. If Zeng Qun had truly been so ill he could no longer recognize anyone, how could he have gone alone to process Zeng Yan’s withdrawal from school? If he had not yet been that sick, how could a stranger have controlled him? And where exactly was Zeng Yan’s body?
Xiao Qian refused to say more. A threat lurked beneath her words: do not dig too deeply. Knowing too much was not necessarily a good thing.
Wu Lianshan pretended to be foolish but continued meeting Xiao Qian from time to time. Once, after square dancing, Xiao Qian removed her thin jacket and was left wearing only a tank top. When Wu Lianshan saw the fan-shaped birthmark on her, it was as though something stabbed directly into her mind.
She would never forget that birthmark. When she was still a child, police from outside the area had shown her and her grandmother information about the birthmark of the female drug trafficker who had escaped. It had reportedly come from intelligence sent by a female informant. Young Wu Lianshan had cried as she copied its shape over and over.
She would never forget it. She could not remember it wrong.
The female drug trafficker had a daughter around Zeng Yan’s age.
Wu Lianshan remembered Zeng Yan taking her to see a street that had already been demolished, Miaoping Street. Zeng Yan had said her father had killed a woman who once lived there and did not know whether that woman’s daughter was still alive.
Xiao Qian had no known background, was the same age as Zeng Yan, and out of everyone in the world, she had chosen Zeng Yan…
The instant everything became clear, Wu Lianshan felt as though ten thousand arrows had pierced her heart.
Xiao Qian was the female drug trafficker’s daughter. Replacing Zeng Yan was her revenge against Zeng Qun and his daughter, while Wu Lianshan herself had actually become her accomplice.
That day, heavy rain fell. Wu Lianshan wept in the downpour. She wanted revenge for her parents, for Zeng Yan, and for herself.
But she could not do it alone. She needed a helper, someone who would obey her every word.
She frequently felt a gaze following her. A male student named Wu Ye kept to himself, but the way he looked at her was intensely eager. She knew he was someone she could use.
She took the initiative to approach Wu Ye. Though they had not formally started dating yet, in practice they were already a couple. Without revealing her intentions, she asked about his family. When Wu Ye told her the story of the stormy night, she vaguely deduced that his sister, Wu Tao, had led their piece-of-trash father toward his death.
Good. She had leverage over Wu Ye.
Wu Ye depended heavily on older women. Wu Lianshan exploited that and gradually tightened her control over him. When Wu Ye promised he would kill for her, she knew the time had come.
But she was not completely confident. Xiao Qian was the daughter of a female drug trafficker. Even after living an ordinary life for years, she should still have a keen instinct for danger. Wu Lianshan did not dare act rashly.
Then she thought of the woman who had humiliated her years ago, Zhao Shuihe. Why not use Zhao Shuihe as a test subject?
After Wu Lianshan told Wu Ye what Zhao Shuihe had done, he was filled with righteous anger. Wu Lianshan appeared before Zhao Shuihe according to plan. The arrogant woman was even more overbearing than she had been years earlier. But the higher someone climbed, the more they feared falling. Wu Lianshan watched with pleasure as Zhao Shuihe came to Xingfu Park.
On his first attempt at murder, Wu Ye indeed left flaws behind. Fortunately, an idiot ran over and patched them up for him.
That experience convinced Wu Lianshan that before killing her true target, she should first create a smokescreen for the police.
What kind of smokescreen? She thought and thought, until she pictured Xiao Qian selling cold dishes.
A vicious idea surfaced. She would kill a series of beautiful women in the food-service industry. The police would inevitably investigate along that direction and never discover why Xiao Qian had truly been killed.
The gaze of death settled on Wu Junqian of Weiming Pastries. Wu Lianshan often watched Wu Junqian’s livestreams and therefore knew her one-sidedly. Wu Junqian had a happy family, with both parents alive and loving her deeply. Why had Wu Lianshan’s own parents been taken from her so early?
She ordered Wu Ye to watch Wu Junqian but could not decide where they should act. Wu Junqian was something of a public figure. Making her disappear without anyone noticing would not be easy.
Wu Lianshan thought of Xuebu Mountain.
Hao Le had disappeared there. Zeng Yan had disappeared there. The mountain was like a ravenous beast that swallowed even the final traces of a person.
A familiar place meant safety and psychological ease. She planned to kill Wu Junqian on Xuebu Mountain, rent a car, and wait for an opportunity.
“You know what happened after that.” Wu Lianshan looked up at the ceiling light and exhaled slowly. “For a while, I actually thought heaven was on my side.”
Chen Zheng knew exactly why she said that. In both the Wu Junqian and Zhao Shuihe cases, unexpected incidents had occurred that benefited the real killers and seriously disrupted the police investigation.
“I didn’t expect you to find me anyway.” Wu Lianshan lowered her gaze. “Don’t ask whether I regret it. I did what you police couldn’t. I avenged my parents, myself, and Zeng Yan.”
Chen Zheng opened his mouth, wanting to say, You were the one who killed Zeng Yan. But there seemed to be no need anymore. The woman before him had already become a monster through and through.
“She still left herself insurance.” Wu Lianshan gave a bitter smile. “That photograph. If there hadn’t been that photograph, would you have been unable to trace it back to me?”
Wu Lianshan explained that, to be safe, she had visited Xiao Qian’s home before Wu Ye went there to kill her. The argument with her boyfriend had been an excuse intended to deceive both Xiao Qian and the police. Her real purpose was to study the layout of the apartment. She had not expected Xiao Qian to become suspicious and secretly take a photograph of her. After the murder, Wu Ye took Xiao Qian’s phone away, but the phone used to take the photograph had been hidden by Xiao Qian and remained there until the police discovered it.
Chen Zheng shook his head. “Every crime leaves traces. If it hadn’t been that photograph, there would have been another clue.”
Wu Lianshan was quiet for a moment, then suddenly said, “About what I said concerning Wu Ye’s family… I actually don’t know how Wu Zhang died. I… I only made a guess. Wu Ye’s sister isn’t the killer.”
Chen Zheng did not respond to that. His final question was, “Do you have any idea who placed one of your family’s handmade coasters at Uncle Yin’s Noodle Shop?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you don’t know what Xiao Qian did with Zeng Yan’s body?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
Chen Zheng stood. Beiye Sub-bureau could handle the rest of the interrogation. Before leaving, he looked back at Wu Lianshan. She was still holding the broken sweater necklace.
“That isn’t the sweater necklace you gave Zeng Yan,” Chen Zheng suddenly said. “Have you already forgotten what yours looked like?”
Wu Lianshan froze and only then studied the necklace carefully. The one she had given Zeng Yan had been a clear, vivid emerald green. This one was green tinged heavily with blue. At first she had assumed time had altered the color. Only now did she realize they were not the same necklace.
“Where is Zeng Yan’s?” she asked softly.
Chen Zheng shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it was disposed of long ago.”
Wu Lianshan released her hand, and the sweater necklace fell to the floor. She gave two bitter laughs and sighed. “So I can’t even remember what the necklace I gave you looked like anymore. Officer Chen, there’s actually one more thing you guessed wrong.”
“What?”
“I didn’t only use Zhao Shuihe as an experiment. I genuinely wanted her dead.” Wu Lianshan stared at the sweater necklace. “I was going to kill someone anyway. I might as well get rid of everyone I hated. That way, if I failed to escape in the end, at least I could comfort myself with the thought that I had no regrets.”
After Wu Ye and Wu Lianshan confessed one after the other, the main thread of the case became clear. Chen Zheng and Ming Han had completed their mission as the investigation’s “cheat codes.” Chen Zheng met Wu Tao alone one more time and asked about Wu Zhang’s death. After a short silence, Wu Tao raised her head and looked directly into his eyes. “He got drunk, fell into the water, and drowned by accident. Neither my brother nor I was there.”
When Wu Ye faced the question again, he had become calm. “Sorry. I was too worked up last time. Ever since I was little, I imagined that I was the one who killed Wu Zhang. But in reality, I was only a child who couldn’t do anything.”
The work before a case could formally be closed was extremely tedious. Kong Bing was overwhelmed, while Chen Zheng and Ming Han suddenly found themselves with time on their hands.
“Uncle Wang and I talked through why Zeng Qun would have withdrawn Zeng Yan from school.” Ming Han climbed into the passenger seat carrying two cups of hot coffee and handed one to Chen Zheng. “Although Zeng Yan was already dead by then, Zhu Qianqian could create the illusion that she was still alive and use that to threaten Zeng Qun. Zeng Qun was being tortured by illness and couldn’t think the way a healthy person could. He believed that if he obeyed Zhu Qianqian, he could win Zeng Yan a chance to survive. But Zhu Qianqian only kept drawing it out step by step until Zeng Qun reached the end of his life.”
Chen Zheng said, “Zeng Yan hated Zeng Qun. All of the Zeng family’s relatives disliked him. He hid too many things from them. He actually… wasn’t as bad as they believed.”
“How bad could someone be if he was willing to serve as a police informant and never betrayed a single secret even by the time he died?”
After a long while, Chen Zheng said, “What a pity.”
Ming Han did not ask what he meant. The two looked through the window at the falling leaves and quietly finished their coffee.
“You think…”
“Back then on the mountain…”
They spoke almost simultaneously, and their eyes met. Ming Han laughed. “Looks like we’re stuck on the same question.”
Chen Zheng paused. “I’m wondering what Wu Lianshan and Zeng Yan actually ran into when they went up the mountain. Wu Lianshan believes the danger they encountered was Zhu Qianqian’s trap. But there’s another possibility. No, not a possibility. A fact. There was another person on that mountain. Wu Lianshan and Zeng Yan discovered his secret, and he followed them because he needed to hide it.”
“The biggest thing they discovered was that the grave was empty and Hao Le wasn’t in it,” Ming Han said. “That person was Hao Le.”
“But Ke Shuer and Wei Youtai both said Hao Le was severely injured.” Chen Zheng’s gaze darkened. “That doesn’t mean he absolutely couldn’t have survived, but he most likely needed outside help. Who helped him?”
Ming Han said, “There was someone else on Xuebu Mountain the day Hao Le fell.”
“Ke Shuer said the person they saw was probably a woman.”
“Then Zhu Qianqian?” Ming Han considered it. “Zhu Qianqian saved Hao Le. They hid on Xuebu Mountain together for a long time. Hao Le then helped her with replacing Zeng Yan? A mutually beneficial relationship…”
“Then how do we explain the coaster that appeared at Uncle Yin’s Noodle Shop?” Chen Zheng said. “That coaster directly affected the direction of our investigation. You could say someone was secretly guiding us toward Wu Lianshan. That person knew everything that happened back then, which does sound a lot like Hao Le.” Chen Zheng continued, “He thought Wu Lianshan had discovered his secret at the time, yet he did nothing for all these years. He didn’t even react when Wu Lianshan approached Zhu Qianqian. Then suddenly he guides us into arresting Wu Lianshan?”
After thinking for a while, Ming Han pressed his fingers to his brow. “It feels like there’s still an important piece missing from what happened back then.” Then he sprawled back against the seat. “So many mysteries. Mysteries everywhere. Forget Xuebu Mountain. We should rename it Mystery Mountain.”
Chen Zheng glanced at him. “You have plenty of mysteries yourself.”
Ming Han blinked innocently. “Huh?”
Chen Zheng said flatly, “The Mobile Unit jumps whenever you tell it to. You weren’t really banished to Zhuquan City, were you?”