Chen Zheng thought for a moment, then quickly grabbed his coat. “Let’s go.”
Ming Han had known he would never let this lead go. Smiling, he followed. “Bro, Junan City isn’t close to Luocheng, and it’s a tourist area. Traffic’s definitely going to be terrible today. I’m going to buy some things for the car first.”
The two went to a supermarket together. Chen Zheng thought they could grab anything at random, but Ming Han actually pushed over a shopping cart as though intending to fill it. Chen Zheng dug a box of men’s underwear out of the cart. “Planning to stay overnight?”
“We’re already going. I heard Weimo Mountain Resort’s fireworks are famous, and I’ve never seen them. It’s New Year’s. We work the case during the day and take a little vacation at night. Is that not allowed?” There was actually a trace of grievance in Ming Han’s voice.
Chen Zheng: “…”
Driving there and back in one day really would be exhausting. Chen Zheng thought about it. He had been to Weimo Mountain Resort before. He had no desire to experience the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds around the lake again, and the fireworks were not especially impressive. Besides, they had no reservation, so there was probably nowhere to stay if they went now. Still, Ming Han looked so enthusiastic that Chen Zheng did not want to dampen his mood. He put the underwear back into the cart and thought that worst case, they could park beside the lake and sleep in the car.
When Chen Zheng picked up a portable camping stove, Ming Han even said, “Bro, pretty romantic.”
Chen Zheng thought, Wait until you’re freezing and crying beside the lake tonight. Then you’ll learn what romance is.
Once they were prepared, Chen Zheng drove while Ming Han talked about Huo Yewei. He was thirty-five and had debuted more than ten years earlier. Back when the record market was still booming, he had released several widely popular songs that people still sang today. But over the past few years, his popularity had fallen off a cliff. No matter how much capital pushed him or how many variety shows he appeared on, nothing helped.
He presented himself as a musical genius and supposedly wrote all his own songs, at least officially. Whether he used ghostwriters was another matter. He did have talent, or he would never have become famous in the first place. But what had truly lifted him up was not talent. It was his family background. He was the nephew of the chairman of the major corporation Weihai Technology, and with that background, resources had never stopped landing in front of him.
Perhaps because his upbringing had been too privileged, he had never experienced how hard it was to struggle upward and thought extremely highly of himself. He had always looked down on stars from ordinary families who rose through capital backing. That was why he despised Lin Dong, had once crushed him publicly, and even had media outlets praise him for being “honest.” Now Lin Dong’s popularity had long since surpassed his, and Huo Yewei was the one borrowing Lin Dong’s attention.
Chen Zheng did not care about the entertainment industry’s endless feuds. What he cared about was this: how had Huo Yewei concluded that Lin Dong was dead? Would Huo Yewei act against Lin Dong simply because of their conflict?
They were nearing Junan City, though still short of Weimo Mountain Resort, when traffic stopped ahead. Chen Zheng saw several police vehicles and frowned. “What happened?”
At that moment, Ming Han’s phone rang. He looked at the screen. “Old Tang.”
Half a minute later, Ming Han hung up with a serious expression.
Chen Zheng asked, “What did Old Tang say?”
Ming Han pressed his lips together. “Bro, we really are going to have to stay here. Huo Yewei was murdered early this morning.”
The entrance at the foot of Weimo Mountain Resort was completely jammed. Junan City police had temporarily locked down the entire villa district, and no tourists or businesses were allowed to leave. Chen Zheng and Ming Han could only park on the eastern side of Junan Lake and borrow a motorcycle to get up the mountain.
The investigator in charge was a Junan Municipal Bureau squad leader named Li Shu. He had never imagined that making the standard report up the chain would bring people from the Provincial Department. He had never dealt with the Mobile Unit, but he knew Chen Zheng’s name. Standing in front of Chen Zheng and Ming Han, he looked between them, then immediately edged closer to Chen Zheng. “Captain Chen, here’s what happened…”
Ming Han: “…”
Li Shu led them toward the scene while summarizing what police knew so far.
Huo Yewei had arrived at Weimo Mountain Resort on the evening of January 17 and caused quite a stir that same day. Fans heard he was there and crowded around the villa, while ordinary tourists came to watch too. The next day, Huo Yewei held an informal concert from home: he played piano while fans outside sang along.
Until the crime, he had not left the villa. His assistant, Xiao Xiang, had returned with him but did not stay there, instead taking a hotel room in the city. On the morning of the nineteenth, Xiao Xiang followed Huo Yewei’s instructions and went grocery shopping before heading up the mountain. He found Huo Yewei dead on the villa’s second floor and called police.
Chen Zheng asked, “Cause of death?”
Li Shu sucked in a breath through his teeth. “The scene is horrifying. Captain Chen, you should see it yourselves.”
The moment Chen Zheng entered, he smelled a thick, bloody odor. It was like highly concentrated sulfuric acid, seeming to bleach the color from the villa’s lavish interior simply by hanging in the air. There were messy bloody footprints on the first floor and staircase. Wearing shoe covers, Chen Zheng avoided them and went upstairs. In the second-floor piano room, he saw a genuinely horrifying sight.
Huo Yewei’s body hung over the piano bench in an A shape, back facing downward and face turned toward the open window. Blood had spread around him in every direction. His chest and abdomen had been split open with a sharp weapon, the incision running from his throat to his lower abdomen. A knife was lodged in his heart. His organs bulged outward and were black, and the blood nearby was an odd color too, unlike normal dried blood.
Cold wind blew in through the window and lifted the curtain, brushing again and again against Huo Yewei’s face as though trying to close his wide-open eyes.
“This…” Chen Zheng carefully examined the blackened organs. Normal human organs could not look like this, and no strange disease would cause it either. Unless, after killing Huo Yewei, the murderer had deliberately poured some kind of liquid into the body. The fatal wound was obviously the stab through the heart. If all the killer wanted was death, there was no need to split open his chest and abdomen. Had the killer done it specifically to dye the organs black? Why?
“Ink.” Ming Han walked to the enormous bookcase, opened it, and took out an empty ink bottle.
An entire shelf held elegant bottles in different shapes. They were indeed all ink. The bottles that had contained black ink were now empty, while the blue and red ones were untouched.
Chen Zheng walked over and took the bottle. “So the killer improvised with what was available? After killing Huo Yewei, they opened his black ink bottles one by one, poured them into his body, then screwed the bottles shut again and put them back?”
Li Shu imagined the scene and shuddered. What kind of nerves did the killer have to do something like that? Forget facing a corpse in the middle of the night. Simply opening every ink bottle would take time. Were they not worried someone might walk in?
“The killer knew Huo Yewei well. They knew his study contained this much ink, and they knew no one would visit before dawn.” Chen Zheng sealed the bottle in an evidence bag. The killer probably had not left fingerprints on it, but it still needed forensic testing.
“Ink, specifically black ink, and only the organs were stained, not the rest of the body.” Ming Han said, “Was the killer trying to say Huo Yewei was beyond redemption, rotten through the heart, liver, spleen, and lungs?”
Chen Zheng nodded. That seemed like the most plausible interpretation. But one point remained strange. If the killer wanted to emphasize Huo Yewei’s wickedness, why was there so little ink on the heart? The most common way to call someone evil was to say their heart was black, yet the ink was concentrated in the abdomen.
The ink might relate to motive and was naturally important, but this was only the preliminary scene examination. They could not spend too much time on one odd detail. Chen Zheng asked, “Have you compared the footprints? Anything from surveillance?”
“Someone tampered with the surveillance last night.” Li Shu frowned. “Huo Yewei’s assistant says the villa cameras are never turned off. Even when Huo Yewei isn’t here, they stay on. This place is unusual. Fans all know he lives here and come to take pictures. The resort even uses the villa as a marketing gimmick. When we checked, we found the camera power had been cut starting at nine last night.”
“The killer was already lying in wait before nine?” Chen Zheng asked. “Where’s the assistant? I want to see him.”
Xiao Xiang had fainted for a while after calling police. He was awake now but remained extremely tense and could barely speak smoothly. “I, I, I don’t know what happened! I came this morning and saw, saw… ah!”
Chen Zheng calmed him for a while and showed his credentials. “All right. Let’s start from the beginning. You and Huo Yewei came back here on the night of the seventeenth. Did he say why he wanted to come? How many days he planned to stay? When was the last time he came here?”
Xiao Xiang gradually calmed down. “Lord Huo thought all the year-end social obligations were annoying. And he wants to release an album next year, so he came back to, to write.”
“Huo Yewei doesn’t like social events?” Chen Zheng did not know Huo Yewei well, but in his impression, the man seemed to enjoy displaying himself in public and craved being the center of attention at social gatherings.
“It’s not that. Lord Huo, he…” Xiao Xiang lowered his head, uncertain how to explain.
“Huo Yewei is dead,” Chen Zheng said. “You were his assistant and one of the people who knew him best. I need the information you give me to show me the whole person.”
Tears welled in Xiao Xiang’s eyes and he hurriedly wiped them away. “I’ll tell you! Lord Huo didn’t actually dislike social events. But for the past year or so, those events stopped making him happy. Every time, he felt humiliated.”
Chen Zheng asked, “Why?”
“Because… because he isn’t popular anymore!” Xiao Xiang sobbed. “Officer Chen, you might not understand. In entertainment, once you stop being popular, it doesn’t matter how huge your old work was. You can only become background for someone else!”
Chen Zheng asked, “How? Who humiliated Huo Yewei?”
Xiao Xiang shook his head. “It wasn’t one specific person. Lord Huo just fell from a high place and couldn’t adapt, so he started avoiding it.”
Xiao Xiang used the variety shows and mixed-bill concerts Huo Yewei most often attended as examples. Back when Huo Yewei was top-tier, he could stand in the center position, receive the most camera time, and the production team did not dare maliciously edit his words. He always appeared last, performed longest, and received the loudest cheers. Huo Yewei had grown up pampered. He did not care about money or outside criticism. Rival fans could curse him all they wanted, so long as he still had just as many fans of his own.
But now things were different. Huo Yewei still occasionally received invitations from major variety shows, but he was no longer the core of their promotions and the cameras did not stay on him. He had actually become peripheral decoration, while people a full generation younger could step over his head. Worse, at his current status, he could not even get invited to those big shows on his own merit. They only offered him face because of Weihai Technology behind him.
Furious, he rejected the major programs and told himself lower-tier shows were fine. Yet even on those, he still did not get center position. It was a huge blow. Starting about a year earlier, Huo Yewei, who had once loved appearing on variety shows, gradually stopped showing his face on them.
With both variety appearances and performances decreasing sharply, he and his team tried everything to make him popular again. But he was older now. In his early twenties, marketing him as the “Young Master of Weihai” had worked. Now he was almost forty, and an “Old Master of Weihai” image would only make people cringe. His team made a terrible move: use his status as a veteran musician to latch onto current top stars. Black publicity was still publicity, after all.
After a while, he discovered even negative attention could not make him truly popular again. He tried to settle down and focus seriously on music. Unfortunately, year’s end was packed with program invitations and banquets. Washed-up or not, peripheral invitations still came like snowflakes, and both his company and Weihai Technology needed him at corporate dinners. He could not stand attending banquets just to flatter other people, nor appearing on shows as decoration. Claiming he needed to write songs, he refused them and came to Weimo Mountain Resort for peace and quiet.
At this, Chen Zheng felt something did not add up. If Huo Yewei truly wanted to focus quietly on creating music, why choose such a publicly known villa? This was peak tourist season. The moment he arrived, fans were bound to surround the place. Why not go somewhere else?
Xiao Xiang looked embarrassed. “Lord Huo actually… actually wanted to enjoy his fans’ love.”
That was where Huo Yewei’s vanity showed itself. He knew having his address exposed was not a good thing. But when he was no longer the focus onstage and no longer the favorite at banquets, only here could he still feel that he stood at the center of the world.
Chen Zheng nodded and continued. “You came back with Huo Yewei. Why didn’t you stay in the villa?”
Xiao Xiang explained that Huo Yewei did not want to be disturbed and booked him a hotel in the city. He only needed to come up every morning to deliver things.
At this point, Xiao Xiang again remembered what he had seen beside the piano and began trembling in fear. “We… we should’ve left on the seventeenth. That was an omen. I knew something bad would happen!”
Chen Zheng steadied his shoulder. “By omen, do you mean someone throwing beer at him?”
Xiao Xiang clenched his teeth and described what had happened. Huo Yewei left a banquet that afternoon in a terrible mood, but when he reached Weimo Mountain Resort and saw so many fans, his spirits instantly lifted. He got out of the car, interacted with them, and accepted their cheers.
It should have been a happy situation for everyone. The fans had waited for their idol, and Huo Yewei received the love he craved. But then a beer bottle flew toward him. At the time, no one knew what liquid was spilling from it. The crowd panicked and scattered, nearly causing a stampede.
Liu Qing, the woman who threw the bottle, was quickly surrounded and beaten by fans. Huo Yewei’s good mood was completely destroyed. Police arrived quickly enough. Xiao Xiang, Liu Qing, and several witnesses went downhill to give statements and did not return to the villa until after two in the morning. Huo Yewei was still furious and awake, drinking heavily.
Xiao Xiang’s expression filled with disgust. “She’s one of Lin Dong’s rabid fans. Lord Huo had a conflict with Lin Dong on a variety show years ago, and she never let it go.”
Xiao Xiang assumed Chen Zheng had never watched the program where Huo Yewei mocked Lin Dong. He told the story entirely from Huo Yewei’s perspective. Listening only to him, one might think Huo Yewei was simply blunt and righteous, while Lin Dong was the one unable to take entertainment-industry banter.
Chen Zheng had no intention of arguing with Xiao Xiang and simply told him to continue.
Police had asked Liu Qing why she did it. Liu Qing had been very calm and said attacking Huo Yewei was her own personal choice and had nothing to do with who she was or was not a fan of. She simply despised people like Huo Yewei. When she heard he had arrived, she did not think much and grabbed a beer bottle before blending into the crowd. She emphasized that she never intended to hurt him, only teach him a lesson. Otherwise, what she threw would not have been a beer bottle.
Once the facts were clear, police asked Xiao Xiang whether he was willing to settle. Internally, Xiao Xiang did not want to, but Liu Qing truly had not hurt Huo Yewei and at most would be detained for two days. He called Huo Yewei. Thinking about his public image, Huo Yewei wanted to use the matter to appear “magnanimous.” He said he would not pursue it and told the station to release her.
Chen Zheng raised an eyebrow. “They just let her go?”
Xiao Xiang became emotional. “Lord Huo was too kind! I wasn’t thinking about omens at the time either. If only we’d left that same day, none of this would’ve happened!”
Chen Zheng noted Liu Qing as a key person and planned to speak with her soon. “After you returned to the villa early on the eighteenth, were you with Huo Yewei the whole time?”
Xiao Xiang said Huo Yewei could not sleep. He made hangover soup and listened to Huo Yewei complain for a while. After six in the morning, Huo Yewei finally said he wanted to rest. Xiao Xiang made breakfast and prepared to return to his hotel in the city. Huo Yewei told him not to come back until the morning of Lunar New Year’s Day and asked him to bring milk and chocolate.
After being up all night, Xiao Xiang was even more exhausted than Huo Yewei. He returned to the hotel and fell asleep immediately. When he woke, he saw that Huo Yewei had actually posted on Weibo saying he was interacting with fans. Terrified Huo Yewei might do something reckless, Xiao Xiang immediately called.
Huo Yewei had completely recovered from his low mood and sounded delighted. He said he was holding a little concert at home and told Xiao Xiang not to worry. Xiao Xiang repeatedly warned him not to leave the villa courtyard and not to let fans inside. Huo Yewei agreed to everything and told him not to come disturb him.
That was their last call.
On the evening of the eighteenth, Xiao Xiang had considered calling Huo Yewei again, but after searching fan reactions and seeing that everyone was happy, he relaxed. He had been with Huo Yewei for a long time and knew he was extremely emotional. When his mood was bad, he became almost useless. When it improved, inspiration might come. Xiao Xiang happily thought that Lord Huo must be staying up all night creating, so he might as well enjoy New Year’s Eve himself.
Xiao Xiang began crying again, burying his face in his hands while his shoulders shook.
Chen Zheng waited for him to recover, then moved to another question, one he had originally planned to ask Huo Yewei himself if he had not learned about the murder on the way to Junan City.
Xiao Xiang lifted his head and saw a phone held in front of him. The screen showed a screenshot of Huo Yewei arguing in private messages with a Lin Dong fan and saying Lin Dong was already dead. Xiao Xiang froze. “This…”
Chen Zheng said, “The screenshot only surfaced this morning, but Huo Yewei’s reply was sent on the night of the seventeenth, while the two of you were on your way to Junan City.”
Xiao Xiang had not been online today and did not know the private message was spreading everywhere. His first reaction was to think about crisis management. Then he remembered Huo Yewei was already dead. What crisis was left to manage?
He smiled bitterly and sighed. “Lord Huo was speaking in anger. He never let us manage his social accounts. I… I didn’t know he was fighting with fans.”
Chen Zheng shook his head. Whether he argued with fans was not the point. “Why did Huo Yewei say Lin Dong was dead?”
Xiao Xiang’s thinking was slow from shock. “Huh? He was just angry…”
“I’m asking how he knew,” Chen Zheng said.
After a moment, Xiao Xiang looked thunderstruck. “That can’t be. Officer Chen, are you saying something really happened to Lin Dong?”
Naturally, Chen Zheng could not reveal that Lin Dong was missing. “Tell me what you know first.”
Xiao Xiang looked very nervous. After a long hesitation, he said, “I don’t know how to explain this. I think it was probably just a joke…”
Huo Yewei had a small circle in entertainment made entirely of people from prominent families. Some had looks too poor to ever be successfully promoted; others, like Huo Yewei, had once been truly famous. Some pursued fame. Others only entered entertainment to shop for lovers. Huo Yewei belonged to the first group. Shu Jun belonged to the second.
Shu Jun and Huo Yewei had known each other for years. The Shu family was even wealthier than the Huo family, but Shu Jun’s popularity was mediocre. He had starred in several dramas tailor-made for him and still had fewer than one-tenth Huo Yewei’s fans. He had never really cared about fame. Before entering the industry, he had already used Huo Yewei’s connections to play around with several minor stars. Finding that not exciting enough, he became a celebrity himself.
Xiao Xiang had always been afraid of Shu Jun. Huo Yewei had a poisonous mouth and was obsessed with fame, but he did not treat staff badly. Shu Jun was frightening. He did not treat people as human beings at all. Lovers and assistants alike were merely toys to him. The Shu family was not clean either. To Shu Jun, killing someone was hardly an unimaginable thing.
Half a year earlier, Shu Jun had taken an interest in Lin Dong. It might have begun because Huo Yewei was always watching Lin Dong. Shu Jun looked him over, decided Lin Dong was his type, and began pursuing him. Lin Dong was hugely popular then, and Zhan Fuhai behind him was not someone to provoke. Shu Jun was rejected and, wary of Yunxiang Entertainment, did not dare force the matter. Xiao Xiang once heard him grin darkly and tell Huo Yewei, “Just wait. Sooner or later he’ll belong to me.”
Recently, rumors spread through the industry that something had happened to Zhan Fuhai. Huo Yewei’s circle naturally had better information than ordinary people. Somehow, Huo Yewei learned Zhan Fuhai had been arrested. That was why he began posting online about Lin Dong losing his backer and stirring attention. Lin Dong never appeared to respond, so the attention grew.
Shu Jun was happiest of all. Huo Yewei said, “No more concerns now, right?”
But after being shut out before, Shu Jun no longer planned to court Lin Dong. He grinned viciously. “He’s finished. He dared reject me back then. Now Zhan Fuhai’s down, I’m going to make sure there isn’t a whole corpse left of him.”
Even Xiao Xiang was frightened, and Huo Yewei was shocked too. As Shu Jun’s old friend, Huo Yewei knew he was capable of something like that, and there was no way Huo Yewei could stop him. His only option was to distance himself.
Chen Zheng asked, “So Huo Yewei came to Junan City not only to escape social obligations, but also to stay as far away from Shu Jun as possible?”